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The Hockey Rumor Business, My 13 Adages, and Why We Aren't TV or Newspapers |
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I am going away from hockey rumors and blogs today briefly.
The rumor business is a cruel and evil mistress. :) These past two weekends I got smoked and burned by two rumors from totally reliable sources. The whole process was crazy, and got me thinking. Believe me when I say to you that I take this stuff really hard. I spent the weekend and much of yesterday talking to a few of my closest writer friends in the industry about what went wrong and how I could have done better. Their advice was really solid and I took it to heart. I have many sources out there who I trust on many different levels, but the number one most important quality about a source to me is their character. Neither of these two sources had ever wronged me before, and in this case even I don't think of this as a setup to screw me. Their lives are far too important in hockey to go out of their way to make me look bad. So that was why these situations were baffling and even somewhat disturbing. It wasn't like these sources to tell me with such confidence that I could go with something...Which later turned out to be completely wrong.
Where I feel I made my mistakes was in how I wrote my stories. I sounded too definite and I should have known better that no matter how close a source is to the situation things can and often will change on a dime. So in the future I will try and curb how definite I am even if the source is the person directly involved in the deal. You see, quite simply, if things change I need to remember that the first thing on their mind isn't, "Wait, before I go and jump on this offer I must inform Ek!"
Many of the folks I talked to when I asked them for their opinions told me that due to the site's popularity I shouldn't be changing a thing. That credibility may not matter in running a rumor site. I disagree completely. For those of you who really do know me, you know that I don't work that way at all. I am very hard on myself. I need to keep growing and learning from my mistakes or I will get bored and move on. So I will continue to learn more from these mistakes and hope to be better for you as a result. My goal is still the same.
Whenever I start to question myself, I always go back to my basic adages the surround what it is that I do. How I define myself. How I have tried to carve out my own particular niche in the hockey world.
#1- I don't source people so that I can obtain better info since my sources can be comfortable that their name won't be attached.
#2- I know that everything that is ever leaked is leaked for a reason, so I do my best to separate the rumors that people want me to put out for their own agendas.
#3- I don't call out other professional writers even if they take shots at me.
#4- I don't play the "I got it first" game if someone else posts something from my particular blog. I don't assume that the person got it from me even if I am the only person currently writing about it. I don't assume that the person is reading me.
#5- If I do see it first somewhere else I will give credit where credit is due.
#6- I aim to treat my readers with the same respect that I would give a professional hockey writer with whom I would sit and have lunch.
#7- I don't blog just to generate traffic or to be controversial. I don't go negative.
#8- I don't write gossip or post stuff regarding off-ice activities.
#9- I don't blog on rumors that involve possible firings of coaches or GMs
#10- I don't write blogs that go after others in the hockey blogosphere on a personal level even if they have attacked me personally.
#11- I don't censor rumours as long as I feel they are from sources "in the know" and are not completely agenda driven. My thinking here is that I would rather give you the chance to look at what is being discussed instead of me telling you what I think should or should not happen.
#12- I don't bother defending myself to obvious haters and trolls.
#13- I don't focus on breaking news since TSN and their resources and staff will always be ahead of me there. So instead I focus on what they maybe can't do as a mainstream outlet. I focus on bringing you what is being discussed in the earliest possible stages of the discussion, fully knowing that 95% or more of what is being discussed will likely never see the light of day. When I have broken something big it has generally just been because I was talking to the right source at exactly the right time.
The purists among you will be quick to point out that those 13 adages are often very contradictory to the tried and true ways of journalism. And you are 100% right. I went to college for journalism. I still have the AP Style book circa 1987. I am forging into a completely different world here.
If Television reporting is about entertainment, and Newspapers are about factual information, then where does the internet fit in? I have been called an entertainer by many and when asked if I see myself as an entertainer I often respond that I do, but I always add that I am an entertainer not out of choice, but rather because people come to my site to be entertained. Using that argument I believe all sports reporters to be entertainers. We cover a SPORT after all. I remember buying the Daily News and Inquirer as a young adult and reading the sports section to be entertained.
There was a time when we bought newspapers to be informed. Before the internet and before the availability of every hockey highlight you would wake up and read the paper to find out what happened last night in the NHL. Now I read the paper to find out what happened in the war and with the government. I don't read that for entertainment, I read that to be informed. I suppose the casual sports fans read the paper to be informed and watch 24/7 news to get their War news. It depends what you choose to follow during your day. Sports is entertainment. Sports writing is as well. At least that is my opinion.
Perhaps this is why I have found that the TV Hockey people tend to relate more to what it is that I do.
On TV, sports don't pretend to not be entertainment like sometimes it does in the newsprint. The Internet is a new world and its own animal. The internet brings the information of newspapers and entertainment of television together, but neither turns out to be the internet's discerning characteristic. If newspapers provide information and television provides entertainment the internet provides engagement and interactivity. That is the difference and it is why news and TV have struggled mightily to cross-over to the web. Newspapers have failed for a variety of reasons, but the biggest is because of the people who have tried to put the "newspapers on line" when they should be building "websites." It is a huge difference. I have had discussions with old-school newswriters who get spooked by all the comments they receive when they write. They ask to have no comments. It makes them uneasy to get real-time feedback that is uncensored.
And we run into issues as well when we get into the fights about "Who broke what story?" This is a discussion I have had very often with mainstream writers and I plan a podcast to bring some big-name people to the table to discuss this.
In this age of Twitter, the whole concept of breaking news is dying (if not already dead) The reality is that everyone is a reporter and everyone has a voice. If I am told by a source that something is happening and then I write it, should I then take several hours and scour the net and Twitter to see if anyone else was told the same thing before I post it? If possible I check TSN or NHL.com, but after that, where do I draw the line?
One reporter nailed it to me the other day, and it has become my latest Mantra. "We worry about breaking stories to our readers, not the world." That is a statement I couldn't agree with more. When I read an exciting story I don't always remember or care where I first read it. I just want to read it. In the days before the internet and better communications a story would break at all different times in all different papers and rarely did anyone accuse anyone else of stealing their story. It all went to press the night before and sat around until someone woke up and picked up their paper and at that very moment the story broke to that individual. The timestamp wasn't 1:23 PM. It was Tuesday. And everyone was fine with it.
What hasn't changed is how those stories came to be. Reporters calling sources and putting together pieces of a puzzle. That is the fun part of my world. We still do it that way. You can read other sites and twitters as much as you want and not get 1/10th the information you will get from a well-placed source. Racing the clock makes us sloppy. The fighting each other over mere seconds makes us look amateur. I admit that.
Therefore the best way for me to do what I do is to not focus on breaking stories but instead get you information from the inside as quickly as I can. So that you can interact with that information and make up your own mind on a rumor. But I need to be more careful with how I phrase things so as to give you that opportunity more fully. There are many little changes that I can make that won't affect what you come to me for. I will never stop putting out every rumor that comes from a legit place, but I am going to try and stay away from the word "imminent" as well as timeframes (ex: in the next 48 hours). Even if those exact words were said to me, using those words just traps me into a world in which I have zero control. Everything happens too quickly in the NHL. The Heatley trade to San Jose litterally happened in a few hours after months of trying.
My end game and hope with Hockeybuzz is simple. By following my own guidelines doing it this way, my readers all get a chance to see a little more into the inner workings of the hockey world than they would otherwise. I do firmly believe that. If I didn't I wouldn't waste your time.
I believe that if you read my stuff on a regular basis and apply your own hockey knowledge and logic then you are more informed and are also far more aware of what is coming. I get great emails saying stuff like, "You never said our team was going after this player, but based on what you were saying it felt to me like the atmosphere was right for them to get him." More often than not a transaction doesn't happen exactly as the rumor, but often enough that rumor played heavily into what eventually happens. Again, the Internet is all about interactivity and engagement.
I think of my readers as a friend who I talk to each day on the phone and I talk hockey with. That's why I also share some of my personal life, and many times this past year I have drawn a great deal of strength from your kindness. Been a crazy year! I had my appendix burst, my father pass away, and my dog pass away...All in the last 11 months!
Some of you can't take this leap and I can tell are just fristrated. You want this to be the NY Times and you want me to be checking up on every source, sourcing every rumor, and only printing facts. If that is you, then I am not the right person for you to be reading. The internet is likely not where you should be. This is a breathing, living space, faults and all.
Thanks for reading this. I will return this evening with a fun new feature regarding trade rumors and teams whose windows of opportunities are changing.
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