New Media and Journalism - on innovation

Since this an issue I've tackled occassionally in the past, I figured I'd share this post I found via Tim Lee's "Bottom up" blog. The article looks at how sports writing is changing and the direction it may be taking in the near future...

Rip-off blogs rarely get much traffic, and it’s not obvious that the world needs a dozen people covering the Yankees. But the thing that caught my eye was that last sentence: “Somebody has to get on the plane, go to Toronto and ask the questions.”

Actually, no they don’t. At the risk of belaboring the obvious, there are a lot of people in Toronto. Many of them are good writers. Some of them even cover sports for a living. And the Internet makes it easy to transmit content from place to place. So there are plenty of places the information can “come from,” and plenty of ways information about the game in Toronto can get back to readers in New York.

Most obviously, Toronto presumably has sports reporters of its own. They presumably cover Yankees away games. So one obvious approach would be for New York publications to syndicate the content of Toronto publications when the Yankees are in Toronto, and for the opposite to occur when the Blue Jays are in New York.

That makes a lot of sense to me. Of course, an obvious objection would be the potential lack of in-depth coverage that comes from a dedicated team reporter traveling with the team. As we've discussed at this space previously, though, team reporters are put in an tenuous position; report enough to be relevant to the paying customer, but avoid stepping on the toes of the team for fear of losing "access". The result is pulled punches and a lot of interesting stories getting buried and thus the ostensible advantage of a dedicated team reporter is all but lost or at least severely compromised.

If in the new age of journalism the relationship between team and reporters/anaylsts can be effectively de-coupled, the resultant industry and public would likely be richer for it.

2009 Hockey New Media Awards

I was alerted recently that "The HockeyBarn Writers Association" (a community of writers open to all hockey journalists across the blogosphere) is holding the first ever New Media Hockey awards on June 17th.

According to the press release, there'll be prizes for "Writer of the year", Rookie of the Year", "Unsung Hero" "Mom/Dad writer of the year" and, yes, even the "Glenn Anderson Leader award". Judges for the contest include the ex-Oiler himself (who will also be handing out prizes apparently), Eric McErlain of "Off the Wing" fame and the venerable James Mirtle. You can nominate a writer for any one of the prizes listed via this link.

This isn't my transparent play for a nomination. Frankly, I don't belong in the conversation of hockey's best bloggers. Were I to pick writers for each award I'd go with:

"Writer of the Year": Lowetide, Mudcrutch, Mirtle (probably exempt, being a judge), Puck Daddy, Tom Benjamin
"Rookie of the Year": Contrarian Goaltender, JLikens, Jonathan Willis (is he still a rookie?) or TLP
"Unsung Hero": Vic Ferrari, Scott from Gospel of Hockey
Mom/Dad Writer: Uhh...not familiar enough with everyone's personal life Im afraid. How about BDHS since Pat should certainly be winning something for his unique style.
Glenn Anderson Leadership Award: for the "writer who best demonstrates a desire to grow hockey the popularity of ice hockey..." Paul Kukla?

No doubt there's others Im missing here - the Battle of Cali crew and Cycle Like Sedins put out good stuff this season too. Lots of deserving "New Media" writers out there right now.