In The Cheap Seats

David may be out of the office but surely he forgot I still have the key.  So, now that I have free reign of the place I’m going to rummage through his medicine cabinet, raid the fridge and probably throw a party until the cops show up.  Well, at least my best blogger equivalency of doing so by jumping in to the media vs. blogger debate.  Sorry for the mess DD.

It’s pretty evident at this point that both bloggers and main stream media are going to lock horns from time to time.  It’s not going to go away, especially with sports blogs.  I’m not the first to address the issue and I won’t be the last.  So those of you with an interest in such things may want to break out the bookmarks because you will be revisiting them for some time to come I suspect.

The most recent dust up with the media is over at Milehighhockey and specifically with local radio host and Altitude Sports post game commenter Sandy Clough.  It all started here, which led Joe to post this, which led to an email exchange with commenter and Tyler Arnson apologist “thedoctor”, and finally to this latest post by Joe at Milehighhockey.

Sandy has done what a lot of main stream media commentators have done.  The responses on the blogs are pretty wide spread but I really like what “Girl with a Puck” had to say on the topic.  I’ve got news for some of the old school media, blogs are not going away.  In fact, not only are blogs becoming more popular but they are gaining greater access and credibility throughout the news reporting world. 

In fact, the center of the hockey universe  ran a piece on blogs and how important they are becoming to hockey media.  Heck, this blog along with others contributed on a feature for the New York Times website.  Both Tom Benjamin and James Mirtle make excellent comments on the subject, ones I find hard to argue with.  I agree with Tom when he says that, “The blogosphere can’t replace the mainstream media. We can only complement it.”   Let’s face it, a lot of the Avalanche blogs consist of working adults who are unabashed fans of their team.  Mainstream media has an obligation to be neutral and “objective” in their approach to reporting.  That’s a huge difference and one that mainstream media has a hard time with, especially when it comes to press passes and things of that sort.

We are lucky in Denver to have some fantastic local coverage of Avalanche hockey.  We are fortunate to have media that are not only passionate about the sport of hockey but in most cases a vast history of experience with hockey in Denver going back to the Colorado Rockies.  Not all hockey markets can make that claim.  I hope that as time goes on that blogs and media in Denver can compliment each other and improve hockey coverage together.  It all starts with blogs gaining trust.  We do that my citing our sources.  Adrian Dater deserves a link when he reports that Forsberg’s visa is approved.  He worked hard to report on that and responsible bloggers will link traffic back to the Denver Post.  We do it by posting corrections, not deleting mistakes.  We do it by leaving archives of our posts available for readers to see.  Last, we do it over time.  Trust has to be earned and I think many Avalanche blogs are slowly gaining that trust.  If our mainstream media can have an open mind about what bloggers can do, then I think we can make the whole Avalanche community a better place.