I've been reading a lot of CBJ blogs, and especially a couple of stories regarding how some NHL teams treat their bloggers. In lieu of these stories, and with the CBJ blogosphere growing by leaps and bounds, I thought maybe it was time to share some of my experiences as probably the non-professional writer with the most experience writing about the Blue Jackets.
I wasn't really a hockey fan when I moved to Columbus from Michigan in 1997. Sure, the Red Wings were on at holiday parties, but I never really paid attention. I was a baseball and football fan until October 7th, 2000. Sitting in my living room in Grandview I watch the Jackets play that game and I was hooked. By the end of the season, I'd gone to several games and signed up as a season ticket holder for the following season.
In that same time, I found a group of friends who had been working on starting what would become the Jacket Backers, official booster club of the Columbus Blue Jackets. I joined up right away, and on the day the club was accepted by the league, I was signed on to help write the first newsletter. In that newsletter, we ran my first ever interview, a discussion with Serge Aubin and Marc Denis, about their friendship and having played together for 3 different teams.
Late in that first season, after several months of covering the team, is when I made my first mistake. I was in the "press room", at that time a small office off the CBJ's locker room where most of the longer interviews with players occurred. It happened to be trade deadline day, and while I waited for my interviewee to arrive, then General Manager Doug MacLean walked into the room, clearly in a less than positive mood. Doug spoke tersely with the staff worker stationed in the room, and it was clear the trade offers weren't going the way he wanted, and he said as much in presence.
As a writer for a booster club newsletter, we didn't really have a setup for quick publishing, so instead of taking the route of holding onto that information for a more thorough story, I threw it up on the fan message board I frequented at the time. Just under an hour later, the then president of the Jacket Backers got a call from the Blue Jackets, with a message given in no uncertain terms: that information was not for public consumption, regardless of the forum.
Needless to say, I took the post down, and I was relegated to covering the Jackets under the pseudonym "staff writer" or worse (in my mind) covering anything other than the team itself. It took the entire offseason for the situation to cool down and for my involvement with covering the team to be ok'ed by Jackets brass. (Remember, this was quite the different team under Doug MacLean's regime).
The lesson to take away from this mistake is that there are some things you learn that you either need to keep to yourself or find a way to say without actually saying them. I still learn all sorts of CBJ related stuff that I can't share with anyone other than my wife and a couple close friends. Remember, don't let the urge to be the person with the story take over for common sense.
Over the next 3 seasons, I regained the staffs trust, interviewing dozens of players and prospects, as well as staffers and officers of the club, with the stories I wrote appearing in Jacket Backers newsletters and online. I got to know nearly everyone associated with the organization and had the trust to be in the press and locker rooms without much guidance and eventually unchaperoned for meetings with players.
The one problem I had after writing all those pieces is that some of my friends who were less than happy with the teams performance (to put it nicely) were disappointed in my writing as I was rarely if ever critical of the teams decisions or on-ice play. Some of that came from writing for a very pro-CBJ audience, the other part came from the fact that at heart we all start writing about this team because we're fans.
That would be my second mistake CBJ bloggers can learn from; don't be afraid to be critical. The Blue Jackets support bloggers because primarily, they know the writers will be a bit "in the bag" for the team. I mean, if not, why would they bother taking their free time to write about it. But that doesn't mean you need to write everything as seen through rose colored glasses. There are a lot of areas where every team can improve, and if you write about these issues in a respectful way, readers and team staff will see you're writing fairly and honestly, and that's all they can ask for.
Following the lockout, I was elected president of the Jacket Backers and in that first season following the lockout, support came back slowly from the fans and the team, so there wasn't much writing going on. I was just happy we were able to get through the season and get the club up and running again. The 06-07 season was much better as we got the writing back on track, and I spent some time in rookie camp interviewing a draftee by the name of Steve Mason. As the season moved on I turned most of the writing duties to other staffers, as I had other duties to attend to.
The 06-07 season marked my last actively writing for the Jacket Backers, as I chose not to run for President and took on more of an advisory and support role to the club. In that time I wrote almost 100 stories and interviews covering all aspects of the club from game operations to player interviews to a personal favorite story; a period spent in the radio booth in between George and Bill, that I was able to turn into a story I am extremely proud of.
Sadly, much of that work has disappeared into the ether. During the lockout, the Jacket Backers website went dormant and a lot of that database of stories was irretrievable. But I have copies of some of the newsletters, so it's not all lost. And just this season, I was able to interview Player Development Coach Tyler Wright for my triathlon blog regarding his recent participation in Ironman Canada.
My final lesson to share: Make sure you enjoy what you're doing; it's not worth it if you don't. Write stories you would want to read, don't try to guess what's in your readers heads.
Oh, and make backups, so that 5 years later you'll still have everything.
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