Having started the last one, I was going to stay out of this one.
But it's a new year (Happy New Year to all my friends on HOCKEY-L!), and the
landscape has changed over the past several months -- very much in keeping
with the nature of this business.
Some good points have been made in this discussion, and some popular
misconceptions have been bandied about. So, in no particular order:
I have nothing but admiration for USCHO, ATR, the CCHA web site and the
people behind themt. Having been involved in college hockey coverage since
my Badger days in the late '60s, when Bob Johnson showed me what a great
game this is, I have rarely seen the kind of dedication I see today at
USCHO, by Adam Wodon at ATR, by the folks at CCHA who do that web site, and,
I must add, from Cindy Paavola, Jon Barkan and our whole crew at USA TODAY
Online.
We college hockey fans have never had so many choices and so much
information, some of it instant, at our disposal.
Of course, we always want more; it's never enough. Sports fans are like
that, as I learned from years of community journalism. So a word of advise,
if I may, to my peers: Take the criticism in stride. Thank goodness there
are folks out there who care!
This issue of chasing down information: College hockey is one of a number of
things we do at USA TODAY Online, and it is by no means first on our site
when it comes to attracting traffic. If we do a good job, it is because of
the dedication of a few special people and the overall support of our team.
We communicate regularly with all the information providers. Some do a
better job than others; some are better staffed than others; some are more
consistent than others. Yes, we try to chase down errant box scores and
other information. A lot of sports info offices take time off between
Christmas and New Years, however, and it was difficult to run down some
boxes. I'm sure USCHO encountered the same problems. Without going into more
detail, we couldn't get all the boxes during the holidays despite our best
efforts and other responsibilities.
As Deron and Mike have said, college hockey isn't the only thing we all do.
Not within our jobs; not within our lives. I thought Jason Kekoa Greene was
way, way out of line in his post, but he's entitled to his opinion. His
description of Production Assistants running all this stuff down at ESPN
made me smile; they certainly aren't running down college hockey
information. They're running after the high traffic sports for their site,
which is part of the reason SportsZone gets the high user traffic. Sorry
Jason, but we have no Production Assistants running around USA TODAY Online,
just some folks working very hard. If that sounds defensive, I apologize.
It's just the real world I work in. One last word on Jason's post. He says
he's amazed USA TODAY Online even covers college hockey. We cover it to the
extent we do because of the dedication of a core group and the team effort
from their peers. In college hockey coverage, dedication has to go a long
way, because the fan base that would result in more resources to work with
isn't there (witness the difficulty of finding new contributors from certain
schools on HOCKEY-L this season).
Adam raises a good point about the democratizing nature of online
journalism. Start up costs for print and electronic media is prohibitive.
Unless Adam is independently wealthy, he likely couldn't start his own
newspaper. But the Web makes him a publisher. ATR makes him a player. The
same goes for USCHO.
The CCHA understands the publicity bonus the Web provides; so does the WCHA,
which has turned to Fans Only to get the job done. When are the ECAC and
Hockey East going to catch up?
Mike Bresina wrote: "It's amazing how many front-page stories are merely
slightly-edited press releases." Excuse me, Mike. WHAT are your reading?
That was true, but decades ago, in most markets I'm familiar with. Sorry,
but I just couldn't let that pass.
Mike and Deron wrote eloquent explanations (I hate to call them defenses) of
the work they do. All I'll add is what everyone who loves college hockey
should be saying:
THANK YOU!!!
These two folks, and those who came before them at HOCKEY-L, are among the
most dedicated college hockey people I have known in 30 years of association
with the college hockey family. I often smile at Mike's efforts in
Merrimack's behalf. If Merrimack was as successful as Mike's efforts to
publicize them, they'd dominate college hockey.
I'm going to join Mike and Deron in appealing to all you lurkers on the list
who could be sharing information and joining in discussion with the rest of
us. Make that a resolution for 1997. Mike and Deron are not the list. We're
all the list -- kinda like Spartacus!
More than enough said. Let's get back to the game.
Steve Klein
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