A Few Words on New York Islander Coverage

New York Islander Fan Central | 9/22/2008 12:43:00 PM |
















* Has to be the most quiet camp to date in terms of outside coverage.

Nothing from the Times, News, Sun or Post and apparently we will not be seeing New York Islander hockey on Msg+ from Moncton or likely anywhere while the house team has all it's preseason games on Msg but supposedly our fans will be getting some crumbs thrown from Islanders TV on the 10pm Msgny show.

If the Islanders are doing a feed from Moncton for tomorrow's game to this point they have not released any details about this.

A year ago former Post beatwriter, Evan Grossman was in Moncton for NHL.com and did a host of updates.

Islanders also seem to be competing with the Bruins for coverage space in the Times and Transcript.

* Will be interesting to see what Mr Botta provides in his new blog. He had some details on what he is planning in the current version of his Point Blank blog which unfortunately he is going to close up. Hopefully it is setup in a way where folks do not have to subscribe to wordpress with a feeder so folks can follow from anywhere as easily as possible.

* It's also been a bit quiet from the teams media folks as well with one update from Steve Mears, nothing from Chris King despite the many Islander TV blogs and interviews which no doubt are time consuming and do not even cover all the updates on the Sound Tigers. If Jiggs McDonald did travel to Moncton again, no one has reported it or if he is preparing to call games or if Billy Jaffe traveled to camp.

Newsday Sports media person, Neil Best who lobbies for expanded Ranger radio coverage on Long Island did not even report the clubs new radio network in the paper despite countless updates and a live chat but did a little selling for Matthew Barnaby who's new job will apparently be replacing Barry Melrose on Espn.

* So where does New York Islander coverage and perspective come from today?

A lot of folks like John Dellapina who work for a lot of newspapers and team beats who finally get to cover the team they really want to be writing about, until they get where they want it's a job and a paycheck, little else.

What our fans need are media people who's first love is New York Islander hockey and there are a lot of them out there. That's when coverage and perspective will improve because even if it's critical it will be passionate and not from a place that just want to rip them to stir reaction or drive our fans away but to tell the clubs story.

Instead we get media who do not write about Al Arbour night or find a negative angle to bring out about it or put down the core of the four weekend or take a pass on Rick DiPietro starting the all-star game.

Funny, but how many times did the Yankees trot out their alumni this summer between Old Timers Day, All-Star game and last night's event who will all be at the new ballpark for day one next April and how many ripped them in the media for it as the competition among writers is far greater than any competition on the field?

When Charles Wang does this with the last New York team to win four championships in a row and more consecutive playoff wins then the Yankees, it's critcized.

If the New York Islanders have a bunch of life-long passionate fans on their beat and competition for coverage and story lines it would be a different story.

* A few more small and subtle changes to the blog, one experimental in terms of coverage that seems to have a little promise I'm sure everyone will notice. Part of the fun in doing a blog is to keep working to improve it for everyone.

Finally in the good news department I have added Pierre LeBrun and Craig Custance blog feeds to the media sections here, I think folks will like the effort and quality of their work.


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