Introduction

For some time now, there have been discussions in the hockey blogosphere about the intersecting of blogs and traditional media forms. Eric McErlain has written guidelines for bloggers wishing to get press credentials from teams. He’s also been critical of the New York Islanders and their “Blog Box.” James Mirtle, who runs his own hockey blog as well as writes for the Globe & Mail, has countered McErlain’s complaint. He’s also congratulated him, as well as others, for their successful moves into the MSM world. Other non-MSM hockey bloggers have been recruited to write for sites like AOL Fanhouse, the CBC and The Score.

There have also been discussions on the subject throughout the Oilogosphere. I have recently written a few posts on the subject. So too have Tyler and Dennis. Many members of the Oilogosphere have worked for or are working in traditional media. The man I consider to be the Godfather of the Oilogosphere, Colby Cosh, successfully moves back and forth between the blogging and MSM worlds. Interestingly, in addition to writing their own blogs on the Edmonton Journal’s website, newspaper writers John Mackinnon and David Staples have started popping up in comment sections throughout the Oilogosphere. We have always linked to their posts, and now they are beginning to do the same. The lines continue to blur.

When is a website a blog? When isn’t it a blog? What are the qualities that indicate a difference to a reader? What are the basic requirements of a blog? Is there such a thing as an “authentic” blog? Does a blog have to be free and independent of corporate control to be considered a blog? Is a blogger who makes money a sellout? Can attempts by the Main Stream Media (MSM) to blog ever be considered authentic, or is “MSM blog” a contradiction in terms?

These are a few of the many questions shaping the current debate about traditional media formats like the newspaper, radio and television, and new media formats like blogs, wikis, and podcasts. I am very much interested in these matters, and not only because of my involvement with this site. This debate is part of a much larger issue, which is the effect that globalization, the information revolution, and the rise of the knowledge based economy is having upon our society as a whole, and traditional industries in particular.

As I am a giant nerd, these things pique my interest. I decided, therefore, to take a look at attempts by Canadian newspapers to operate their own hockey blogs. Their motivation in doing so is obvious: they want to stay relevant, and they want to continue making money. But have they been successful in their ventures? Can their blogs really be considered blogs? Will they get back the many readers they have lost, or are their attempts too half-hearted, too little, and too late? And so down the rabbit hole we go.

Methodology

• The focus of the project was Canadian MSM blogs about hockey.
• I only examined the newspapers where there was an existing NHL franchise, as well as the two national newspapers.
• I did not look at any French language newspapers.
• I looked at one single month of activity, which was October of 2007.
• A spreadsheet was created, in order to compare, contrast, evaluate and illustrate the variety of ways these blogs were being utilized.

Categories/Sub-Categories

• I came up with four different categories that I thought best described and defined a blog. They were: content; creativity; community; design/functionality.
• I wanted to avoid making evaluations based on personal taste when and where I could, so I took out the “creativity” category, and avoided making any judgments on the look or design of the sites.
• In putting together the spreadsheet, I could of course not avoid making subjective evaluations entirely. In fact, the basic categories I came up with are in and of themselves subjective. But I tried to limit it where I could, and much of my thoughts about the categories and defining blogs came from independent sources, such as the Wikipedia entry on blogs, as well as an article from the Annenberg School for Journalism at USC. My goal was to save any personal comments I had on any of the sites for the “General Commentary” and “Summary” sections below.
• I ended up with fourteen sub-categories concerning blogs: type, creativity of content; frequency of new content; use of audio/video; use of images; rating (language, etc.) blogroll to other MSM sites/blogs; blogroll to non-MSM hockey blogs; backlinks to other MSM sites/blogs; backlinks to non-MSM hockey blogs; number of comments; RSS feeds/aggregators; ease of leaving comments; archives; tags/Categories/Subjects

Newspapers

• The newspapers I looked at were: The Vancouver Province; The Vancouver Sun; The Edmonton Journal; The Calgary Herald; The Ottawa Citizen; The Ottawa Sun; The Toronto Star; The Montreal Gazette; The National Post; The Globe & Mail; other Sun Media newspapers.

The Spreadsheet

• The spreadsheet is broken down into four pages/tabs: B.C.; Alberta; Ontario; Quebec & National.
• Links to each of the sites I examined should be visible on each page/tab.
• Depending on the size of your computer monitor, you may have to scroll to the right, and/or down, to see all of the information.
• I believe I have succeeded in making the spreadsheet viewable to all, but editable only by me.
• I’ve never used Google spreadsheets before; if there is a problem, let me know.

General Commentary

Vancouver Province/Vancouver Sun

• There are five blogs covering the Canucks, three at the Province and two at the Vancouver Sun.
• Orland Kurtenblog is very similar in style and tone to the non-MSM hockey blogs (which is no great surprise, as that is where they started). They have an actual blogroll, they play around with pictures and video, and the irreverence is in full gear. The only surprising thing about the site is that they don’t provide many backlinks to the non-MSM hockey blogs in their posts.
• I was very surprised to see that Cam Cole’s comments section was not moderated. Unfortunately, Cole has only posted three times, ever, on his blog, and his blogroll page is completely blank. He is not alone in that regard.

Edmonton Journal/Calgary Herald

• There are five blogs covering the Oilers at the Journal, the most for any single newspaper. There is one blog covering the Flames at the Herald.
• At the Journal, John Mackinnon and David Staples have most embraced blogging. Staples has begun doing a daily round up of posts throughout the Oilogosphere, and has an expanding blogroll on his site. He has even used a photoshopped picture of Kevin Lowe, originally made by Tyler Dellow at mc79hockey.com, in a couple of his posts. Unfortunately, it is still very difficult to leave comments on Staples’ site. It requires a registered account and a password.
• Mackinnon has added a couple links into his blogroll (including a link to this site), and he references the Oilogosphere on his site. He has not, however, ever provided a backlink to any of the posts he refers to.
• In trying to determine the ease of commenting on all the MSM hockey blogs, I attempted to leave comments at each and every site. Even days later, the comments have not appeared on the sites of Dan Barnes, Curtis Stock and Joanne Ireland (I didn't go back and check any others beyond the Journal).
• Scott Cruickshank and Jean Levebre are posting regularly on Flames Insider. Unfortunately, leaving comments on their site also requires a registered account and a password. They also don’t tag their posts, which, without the aid of a search function, makes looking for posts based on subject or keyword very difficult.

Ottawa Citizen/Toronto Star/ Ottawa Sun

• There are three blogs covering the Senators, two at the Citizen, and one at the Ottawa Sun.
• James Gordon has embedded YouTube clips into his site, and has a bunch of great photoshopped pictures scattered throughout his posts. I enjoyed this post on Nicholas Picholases. Unfortunately, in that same post, you can see that Gordon refers to a Sabres blog without ever actually backlinking to it.
• James Duthie’s posts read exactly like posts by Bob Mackenzie and Darren Dreger on TSN’s page, which is to say they read like word for word dictations of two-minute television segments. They even have that style of spacing that Mackenzie’s posts used to have (essentially one sentence paragraphs). His posts also use different fonts and different font sizes, which I’ve always associated with mobile blogging. I have no idea if that is why this sort of formatting inconsistency occurs (the same thing is occurring on some of the other blogs I looked at), but if so, he’s literally phoning his posts in. His first post on the merits of blogging is insightful, as I’m sure it is a sentiment shared by many members of the MSM.
• Chris Stevenson’s blog is—with the exception of Dr. Hockey’s fantasy hockey blog—the only hockey blog in the Sun media chain. Stevenson’s blog also requires registration and a password for comments, and features a comprehensive list of rules concerning commenting.
• There are two blogs covering the Leafs in the Star. The Star Sports Blog has not featured a post on the NHL since June of 2007, however, and therefore probably shouldn’t even be included with the other blogs I examined.
• Chris Young used to have a fantastic blog at the Star, but, sadly, it is no longer operating.

Montreal Gazette/National Post/Globe & Mail

• There are two blogs covering the Canadiens in the Gazette. Mike Boone’s posts are fed into the Habs Inside Out blog, however, so you can see everything by going to just that one site.
• The Habs Inside Out site is far and above the best blog being run by these newspapers. In fact, it’s one of the best hockey blogs I’ve ever seen, period. There are a wide variety of posts—liveblogging, editorial, opinion, gameday, game-in-photos—and they are all composed in styles ranging from the professional to the completely irreverent. They run a “puckcast” that is available both on the site and on iTunes. They get a huge number of comments, and they aren’t moderated. The writers on the site participated with their readers in a social event called the Habs Fan Summit. The paper also updated the site as I was working on this project. They added more aggregators/social network options, as well as changed the design and colours on the site. Once they finished the upgrades, they posted on the changes, and asked for further feedback. Despite being a CanWest site, Habs Inside Out looks and acts nothing at all like its fellow CanWest hockey blogs. My only complaint is that I couldn’t access the comments in the archives section, even for the newest posts. That may have been something that was cleaned up with the upgrade. I haven’t had a chance to look at it again.
• The Globe on Hockey blog doesn’t even have a blogroll linking to its own internal hockey page. Instead, the blogroll is a standardized list of all the blogs on the G&M site, including Inside Energy and TIFF Tasks. Readers cannot search archives for old posts. Leaving comments is also difficult, as it requires registration and logging in with a password. Comments are also moderated.

Summary

I didn’t have an answer to the question “what qualifies as a blog?” before I started this project, and I’m not sure I have an answer now. I’m not sure I even wanted an answer to that question, as much as I just wanted to explore, record, and ruminate. As such, here are some final thoughts:

• There are obviously things that I expect from a blog. The categories and sub-categories I came up with demonstrate that. For instance, I am a strong believer in blogrolls, backlinks, and open comments. The first two affect rankings and search engine strength; all three demonstrate a commitment to collaboration and community. As a blogger, I am not perfect in this regard. I get lazy and don’t add sites to the blogroll, and I delete comments from commenters who I believe have gone over the top (don't even get me started on how I feel about the design and look of our site). But I don’t have an aversion to or feel antipathy towards bloggers and commenters on the internet. I also understand that if I want to be a successful and well-liked blogger, I have to put some time and work into building a blogroll, linking to other people’s posts, and conversing with people in the comments section. It’s how the system works, plain and simple.
• Or is it? On Colby’s old site, he didn’t have a comment section. Paul Wells doesn’t have one (nor does he have a blogroll). I think I’ve read the comments on Andrew Coyne’s site about five times. And yet I think of all three men as bloggers. Indeed, they are three of the most prominent bloggers in the country. Am I being unfair in expecting MSM hockey bloggers to do things that I don’t expect other MSM bloggers to do? Hmmm.
• It is obvious that there is a correlation between the ease of leaving comments on a site and the amount of comments that site gets. Habs Inside Out is a perfect example of this. The question is whether such a thing affects the overall traffic a site receives.
• Almost all of the blogs I looked at are written by reporters. These men and women see themselves as reporters, and view the world through the lens of “professional journalist.” Yet I’m willing to bet that the writers of most non-MSM blogs don’t see themselves in that way at all. I know I certainly don’t. I’m a fan who likes to write. I feel no professional obligation to be objective. My desire to be objective comes from someplace else, a philosophical commitment to rationality and reason. This difference between seeing oneself as a fan and seeing oneself as a professional journalist is critical in any understanding of the style and operation of MSM and non-MSM blogs.
• In the end, I still think of MSM blogs and non-MSM blogs as two different beasts, but maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe it should be as simple as good blogs and bad blogs. There are blogs I looked at during this project that are a complete waste of time. It’s pretty obvious the reporter has no interest in maintaining it, so why it is still in existence is beyond me. But a few of the blogs I quite enjoyed. They were funny, irreverent, critical, and creative. To be honest, I hadn’t really expected that.
• At the same time, it’s obvious where the strengths and weaknesses lie for both non-MSM and MSM blogs. Joe Posnanski discussed it at length in a post last week. There are certain things that an MSM blog will never do, certain words or suggestions you’ll never see on any MSM bloggers site. But the non-MSM blog won’t have that direct access, won’t get that inside story from a player or coach that explains a certain act or decision. I wonder, then, if long-term the most successful blogs won’t be the ones that straddle that line between MSM and non-MSM.

Further Reference

• “How to Give Blogs Credit: a Handy Guide for the Mainstream Media” by Matt Ufford.
• “Blogs to Riches: The Haves and Have-Nots of the Blogging Boom” by Clive Thompson.
• “A Blog for Baseball Fans Builds a League of Sites” by Daniel Terdiman.
• “Weighing the Merits of the new Webocracy” a debate between Andrew Keen and Chris Anderson. Podcasts of the full debate are here and here.
• “Unmasked & Anonymous: Answering Ethical Questions About a Blogger Named Eklund” by Greg Wyshynski.

# posted by andy grabia @ 12:19 am