by Dennis Bernstein  |  Hockeytalk.biz
Exclusive to Hockeytalk courtesy The Fourth Period

DECEMBER 17, 2010 -- Los Angeles – Over the past month, an off-ice story developed that while intriguing stands to be inconsequential over time. It’s the L’affair de Le Islanders and their former PR head turned blogger Chris Botta. The short story is that when the Islanders whacked Scott Gordon for being unable to raise an AHL roster to the performance level of an NHL team, Botta was excluded from the obligatory conference call announcing the installation of Jack Capuano as the interim coach.

Things got worse for the former team employee when the team PR department informed him that he was no longer welcome to cover the team. One of the best things about the internet is the light speed at which news travels and just a few tweets later, Botta had an audience with Mike Francesa on WFAN New York’s afternoon drive time show. Suffice to say the hour spent on the matter was the most concentrated Islanders talk on that station in a decade.

The deposed scribe theorized that the reason he was banned was his consistent comments about owner Charles Wang’s active hand in team operations, a la Jerry Jones in Dallas. While Francesa gave Chris a platform in front of millions of listeners because ‘he’s a nice guy’, the host went to great lengths to defend Wang as Islanders owner, citing incurring yearly losses of $ 20 million a year and being victimized by ‘the worst lease in professional sports’ at Nassau Coliseum.

It’s unlikely Wang gave the word to pull the trigger on the ban as GM Garth Snow was the one that was offended by the mentions (never proved) of Wang’s influence in the front office. Other scribes went to the writer’s defense, the New York chapter of the Professional Hockey Writers Association appealed to the league office (but surely not Colin Campbell, he’d claim Botta was faking it) to repeal the ban.

I can’t disagree with the league’s failure to mediate the situation as it’s always been NHL policy for teams to determine who gets media credentials for regular season and the first three rounds of playoffs. The league makes the determination for special events like the Stanley Cup Finals, Winter Classic and All Star Game. Collectively the team, Snow and Wang have not commented publicly, so no balanced reporting can be done, for now it’s Chris said, Chris said.

This circumstance adds to the continuing and increasing discussion of what the standards are for journalists, the legitimacy of bloggers and what defines the phrase ‘mainstream media’, the valuable moniker that an aspiring hockey writer seeks to attain.

ELECTRONIC JOURNEY

To get first hand information on both sides of the story, I decided to enlist an expert, someone who’s transitioned from a web writer over a decade age to a senior writer for a print publication, an individual who is a member in good standing of the PHWA and pretty decent guy overall. Fortunately for me, I didn’t travel very far to get in touch with this scribe, all I had to do is get up from my desk and look in the mirror.

My story is the exact path a prospective writer should take to get into that exclusive club, the one in which a team’s public relations department trusts you, where players know you’re fair even when you ask difficult questions and you don’t have to call the team is see if there’s room in press row to cover the game. It’s the nirvana known as ‘season credential’ status.

My journey started over a decade ago, before I came to Los Angeles I put together some green to do a little fan newsletter covering my hometown team, the New Jersey Devils. I ran ads in the paper and on their pre-game television show and couldn’t have picked a worse team to give additional promotion. Fans of the franchise know the clandestine operation that Lou Lamoriello has run historically (which seems to be very slowly evolving with Jeff Vanderbeek’s ownership) and this was an age when Uncle Lou fired a PR director for starting a Scott Stevens Norris Trophy promotional campaign. Lou’s central marketing strategy was the equivalent of hanging a shingle outside the Meadowlands Arena that said ‘hockey tonight’. Their attorneys sent me threatening letters and did everything they could to shut me down but those that know me intimately know the worst thing you can do is tell me I CAN’T do something.

In the midst of doing research for the weekly, I came across a website, the dearly departed In The Crease that was looking for writers. The editors reviewed my work and were kind enough to give me a column (feel free to track them down and blame them for all this) and that’s the first piece of advice to those with aspirations. Like any other business, you succeed by building relationships, no matter how great your talent may be, you can’t do it alone, you must be collaborative. In The Crease was very good to me during the early days of hockey coverage on the internet and I parlayed my work into appearances as an NHL analyst during the infancy of ESPN Radio. As a result, I received the gift of having a substantial audience read my brand of hockey coverage, as skewed as it might be from a displaced New Yorker living in the hockey wasteland that Los Angeles was since 99 left.

During this time, I reached out to the Los Angeles Kings in the hopes of covering the team specifically and the league overall. The team was rightfully skeptical at first but saw how I conducted myself at practice, the nature of my questions and ascertained that I WASN’T a star struck fan trying to get locker room access and looking to get into games for free.
The joke goes that the reason I got into hockey writing in 1997 was specifically TO get into games for free.

Over the years, others took notice of my conduct and talent (?) and some were very influential. Two years ago, I decided to take a night off from press row and take in a Kings-Lightning game with as a civilian with my wife, now a Kings partial season ticket holder due to the fact that the sport has enveloped her home. I received a message that the esteemed Hall of Fame writer Helene Elliott wanted to chat with me, likely wanting to discuss joining the PHWA. Despite my better half’s insistence on immediately running up to the press box to initiate a dialogue, I played it cool and dropped a note regarding the matter. When the call came that she wanted me to be counted among her peers, my first response was ‘are you sure you have the right Dennis?’ I still do a double take when the ballot for the Hart, Norris, Selke et al, hits my mailbox from the NHL.

Sometimes success is not about talent but knowing how to work the system, I realized early on that you need to respect those who’ve gone before you. Most beat writers have earned and deserved respect in doing a job that often competes with what I’m attempting to achieve. I’m fortunate to be a columnist for The Fourth Period as it spares me the dreary task of writing a game report for a boring mid-season game and then having to re-write it when the game gets tied with three minutes left in regulation. Fans who sit in the upper reaches of Staples Center can hear the pounding of frustration on the desks along press row on those nights.

Once we get to the locker room, I’ve always to deferred to the beat people, they have to pull quotes, hustle back to press row and incorporate quotes into a second and sometimes third deadline (maybe some of you are reconsidering that accounting career, eh?). With that knowledge, I always defer to the beat people and respect their time constraints. My question to Dustin Brown about the power play won’t change the hockey world, so it can always wait until the first wave of reporters has gleaned what they need. So by stepping aside, I’ve deferred my ego and by asking quality questions in Kings Coach Terry Murray’s press conference, I provide additional content to my peers for their stories.

PRIVILEGE

This is the point in the story where the question of credential status and game access comes into focus. Chris Botta is a good guy, he credentialed me for Islanders game back in the day but I’m not a follower of his work. My assumption is that since he writes for more than one website, he’s able to translate his experience of two decades around the NHL to the written word, not a stretch for someone coming out of public relations.

To say that the Islanders ban is tantamount to censorship is wrong and I formulate that opinion from my experience dealing with credential status from two angles. I never forget that my game night access granted by the Kings is a privilege and not a right. I have a great relationship with the team but if the Kings became displeased with my actions or writing about the team, they’d have every right to revoke my credentials.

The fact that Chris Botta doesn’t sit in press row these days doesn’t mean he can’t cover the game or analyze the team. He can watch MSG network (if he doesn’t have Dish Network like I do) and evaluate their on-ice performance. He can cull the same quotes that he pulls from players by watching the post game show instead of standing next to them in their stall. Taking it to the extreme, he could BUY a ticket to the game if it was essential for him to be in the building to do his work. He walked a line with his criticism and is paying an unfortunate price but until the Islanders go to court to shut down any of the outlets he writes for, only then will the issue of censorship be legitimate.

Chris’ followers will still read his takes and opinions unless his employers decided to pull the plug, an unlikely scenario given all the notoriety and controversy attached as it’s great for business. Before you say I may be piling on the writer, I encountered a similar circumstance in my capacity as Director of US Operations for TFP.

Over the past summer, I set out on a major recruiting campaign for our site to give the readers a dedicated hometown reporter in every market. I offered no pay and no game credentials, yet got some talented people to jump on board because of the strength of the TFP brand. They understood the value proposition of getting exposure to our large hockey audience and as a group have significantly raised the level and quality of the coverage. I’m biased but I think our crew rivals any team covering the NHL.

Some of the team inquired about the possibility of game credentials and while a valid inquiry, our policy is to take a wait and see attitude. Since the team is remote, our stance is to build a relationship with a writer and receive consistent work before approaching the team regarding game night access, exactly what the media relations department is looking for. The advice I give my team and any other writer who is not writing for an established outlet (I find that on balance, most teams care little about the medium where the work appears but more about the quality of it) is to get to a team practice. The post game scrum is probably the worst place to develop your talent, players are in a hurry to catch a bus or not available, coaches may be in a dour mood after a bad loss and it’s not much fun climbing over equipment bags for true. Since our content doesn’t include game reports, it’s not vital for our team to have game access (as groans start from around the TFP writing universe).

Walking into a locker room after a practice or a morning skate is an entirely different animal. The players are far more relaxed and have more time, the coach is more willing to discuss strategy and prospective moves, team broadcasters are around and tell the best stories. Only by attending Kings’ practices last season was I able to witness the players’ ping pong tournament and learned that Drew Doughty is also a stud in that sport as well. That’s where I built my relationships, established my legitimacy and earned my respect. For those of you that have another gig (virtually everyone does these days), while hitting a practice during the week may be logistically undoable but doing a Saturday 10AM pre-game skate is; if one is REALLY serious about establishing themself. I’ve never had the experience where a writer wasn’t welcomed to a practice by a team, not withstanding Mr. Botta’s current status.

PROCESS

Though I’m a child of the internet age as it pertains to my hockey writing, I totally get the establishment’s side of the argument. Last season, we traveled to Alberta to do a story on hockey in the prairies, a journey to the heartland for those who’d never been, we even made the drive from Calgary to Edmonton to get a little more flavor of the life. While the story was well received, the back story was that although I’m a member of the PHWA, had the support of the Kings (the team that was playing on the Alberta trip) and senior writer for a print publication; I was denied credentials for both games. While the Flames just said no with zero elaboration, the Oilers gave us a tip as to why I wasn’t deemed fit for press box consumption.

After years of denying access to web writers, Edmonton decided to grant credentials to one fan site on a trial basis. As if on cue, the author of the site waited all of a week before flaming the team and that would be that. Any writer with a web presence regardless of the outlet was thrown in the same turnip truck but with that said, if Pierre LeBrun wanted to come up and do a piece for ESPN.com, I’m certain the doors for the Northlands Coliseum press box would swing wide open.

Do teams like to exercise a measure of control over the news surrounding the team? Of course they do, the term “upper or lower body injury” is the smoking gun but control of information is a goal of any business with a high public profile. Apple doesn’t publicize when an executive violates company policy citing ‘company confidential’ information but a writer can form opinions over public SEC filings. If you know the game and can translate your views cogently onto a Word document, it doesn’t matter where you view the game from.

Are there bloggers that are deserving of access at NHL games? Indeed, both up and comers and established veterans who make valid analysis and unearth great stories should sit side by side in press row. Given the state of the publishing business, if writing for a print publication established legitimacy, we’ll soon have only 30 credentialed NHL writers throughout North America.

I sympathize with those that can’t get access but Chris Botta’s plight has nothing to do with censorship as there’s no risk of his right to freedom of speech. Those who feel there’s discrimination at hand need to put things in perspective because the NHL is located in the toy aisle of life. Some think every blogger should be credentialed for a game and logic follows that if the team they cover sells one more ticket from a fan reading their work, everyone wins. The dark side is that the online writing community suffers every time a poorly constructed or irresponsible piece circulates to a team’s fan base. That’s why I tell our writers it’s not OK to tell the readers that the team you cover sucks; you have to tell them WHY they do. Make valid and reasonable points, suggest solutions (trades or demotions) and have fun with it, an important point because at the end of day we’re here to entertain the masses.

So while we encourage writers, no matter their affiliation to continue to help shape what 21st century hockey coverage should look like, the reality is that only thing a writer is entitled to is their opinion.

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