(Photo Credit: Tempo at Bournemouth’s Gervis Place
Copyright 2009 Transdev Yellow Buses)
Every writer has had this feeling at least once and if you have written long enough, that the bus feels like it ran over you and sped back over you. Rinse, wash, and repeat! You get the idea. I have seen social hockey sites come and go and blogger networks come and go as well. Most of these “social” sites are just glorious shameless plug after shamless plug. Let’s be honest. We all have been guilty of it, including myself.
When this whole hockey blogger / credential issue popped up yet again, I cringed. This is not because of what teams like the New York Rangers and Edmonton Oilers want to do. That is really not under my control. I cannot do anything other than continue to do what I do best. Keep on writing of course! It is best to worry about one’s content but be mindful of others. Ego in this business can get you everywhere and nowhere all in one motion.
Take Ted Leonsis as Exhibit A. Ted may know better than anyone how social media works. He owns a hockey team and now a basketball team, ran AOL, etc…etc…etc. Here was his take on how blogging is the new MSM, sorry to the old guard. I do respect many of them. Enjoyable was the analogy comparing bloggers to oxygen. Now this can have a two fold effect, one being positive and one being quite adverse.
It is well documented how many run-ins bloggers have had with MSM, teams, and even players. For the purposes of this discussion, that does not matter at the moment. The reality is it is time to focus on the positive without stroking egos. If you are writing to have your ego stroked or doing a radio show for that matter, you are in the wrong damn business. Excuse my language but most of us really do this for the love of the game and the dream to cover it for either the team or league we truly love most.
Personally I have written for a variety of hockey topics over the past six years. The past year and a half I have been writing more “full-time”, I guess you can say. What I have learned in that time about myself and other writers and podcasters is this. There needs to be a direction for those who want to take it to that next level as well as one for those who enjoy what they do. There are three different kinds of ambition in this world. Time to go over them real quick.
Upward mobility ambition is basically the drive that some bloggers have to achieve that next level. The key is some will stop and regress while others keep going. This kind of ambition is the most dangerous because as the ego continually gets stroked, the writer often forgets where he or she came from. Once those roots are forgotten, that writer’s conscious is compromised.
Then there is ambition by contentment. Basically this is the kind where the writers writes for the love and joy but that is basically it. There is no interest in moving up in the world. It is a hobby or something done just for fun. A point of emphasis is that there is nothing wrong with this philosophy. Many bloggers just enjoy doing what they do. God forbid, that is a novel concept. That is something most of us have to understand.
Finally there is the “no accountability ambition”. These are the sites and writers that just do not care at all. Some may be wildly successful and some may be completely obscure. Take sites like Deadspin and even Eklund from HockeyBuzz who do not always care which toes they step on when coming to a head on a story. Caution is often thrown to the wind and fans suffer but more noticeably, bloggers do. Ask former HB writers of the HB stigma some time. It is not necessarily fair but it is definitely there.
The goal for writers and podcasters now may be this. It really has come time to form some sort of community that actually sticks. We have seen so many come and go. The three levels of ambition mentioned above are barometers of how the true blogger climate is as close as possible. We took an unscientific look at many of these blogs and writers that are not in the MSM. Here is a pie chart that we came up with. Keep in mind again, this is unscientific but the numbers were surprising.
Out of 150 blogs we took a look at it, here were the results……….
- Upward Mobility – 42
- Contentment -79
- No Accountability – 29
What does it all mean? Well 56% of the blogs that we looked at seemed content with what they were doing, there was no clear progression or delving into the “who gives a crap” phase. Now what is coming? A more scientific poll. Over the next month or so, we will be sending out a simple questionaire to blogs out there and we may also post this on twitter as well.
Whichever category you feel your blog fits in, just pick one and send it back to us. No one will specifically know what your blog picked as its choice. This is more for survey purposes to see if the informal supports the formal. The goal is to get an idea of what social platform can be formed to accomodate as many bloggers and podcasters as possible that works for everyone. Stay tuned!
