Koach's Korner on eLynah

[Beeeej]

[Q]billhoward Wrote:
At the Everblades tournament, we sat next to the Carefoots and his girlfriend, and I think she's the kind of person who would have made a good TV impression wearing a Cornell jersey. [/q]

Better, I hope (or at least different) than the one TBell's girlfriend made at Lake Placid.  Unless we want the players' girlfriends to be collecting dollar bills for the program.

Beeeej

[billhoward]

[Q]CowbellGuy Wrote:I'm going to look into getting photo credentials and I'm perfectly willing to make sure no one will see any Cornell apparel on me when I'm shooting in the corner. I can be professional about it. It remains to be seen if they can, too.

If there is any question about the legitimacy of ELynah, I'd like to point out that ELF is averaging 15,000-25,000 page loads per day. Thanks to everyone who posts, because a forum without content is about as useful as, well, yanndanis.com. In addition, I'd be happy to start providing USCHO with photos again if athletics can treat me with a modicum of civility.[/q]

In theorgy, media credentials would be easier to come by if there's a view (like, say, the home page) that is news- or analysis-related, to make it even more obvious that the site has a pretty solid aspect beyond the forums and the historical databases. OTOH you'd think that at one of the seminal universities for raising the visibility of the Internet (the generally well-known story about how Bill Gates heard of the intensive use of the Web at Cornell about a dozen years ago that had previously slipped Microsoft's mind and that got Microsoft to Webify everything it did), that it'd be obvious that online is every bit as legit as print, radio, and TV. You'd think.

It would also be pretty powerful if eLynah posted its own deadline-driven game story, since USCHO seems to be a no-show so far this year in terms of live coverage and the Sun and Journal don't post online until they've rolled the presses.

Of course, if I was Cornell athletics and thinking about enhancing the fans' media experience with hockey, I'd also be figuring out a way to stream a Webcast back from Munn Ice Arena. The game is already on TV, only the coverage by Comcast of Lansing is for Lansing Michigan, not Lansing NY.

[ugarte]

[Q]billhoward Wrote:

In theorgy, media credentials would be easier to come by [/q]
And I'd apply for one. Does this have anything to do with what Beeeej was talking about?

[upperdeck]

really i sit in O and never have seen that happen.. i do recall the problem when other teams fans came and stood all game and started quite a rucuss.,.

[billhoward]

It's been a long while since I was in the Lynah press box so it's hard to say how readily you'd come by credentials. If someone is writing a game story or analysis that shows up in a timely fashion in an identifiable media outlet that's not a backwaters operation, then fine, you should get credentialed. (So I say.)

How amenable is Cornell athletics to new entrants onto the media scene? Cornell, remember, was the last of the Ivy League schools to admit women to the football press box, but that was 30 years ago (although Mike Teeter was a goal judge then, so it can't be that long ago). The SID at the time said with a straight face (to the annoyed woman from the Crimson trying to get in), "No women in the press box," even as a couple of athletic department spouses were sitting there inside keeping warm from the cold weather. (President Corson more or less single-handedly changed that rule the next Monday when the Crimson used that as its game story. It was not good PR for Cornell.)

If you're writing a legit game story -- and eLynah appears to be a legit site -- I don't see why you shouldn't be credentialed. It would help if it's a timely posting, meaning that night. (A period by period writeup / analysis would be even cooler.) I think I mentioned in a separate posting that the site might want to be recast so the homepage has some newsy aspects to it, but that's a choice the site has to make -- does it want to recast its look just to get one or two people in Lynah with press passes?

I don't think whether the athletic department likes your media outlet or not should enter into the equation. (Otherwise there'd be almost nobody from the media allowed into a Bush press conference.) At the press table, one tries not to cheer for the home team, although you can still say "Amazing shot!"

If you want a place with a table in Lynah just to take notes and then post something at midweek, you may have a tougher time getting credentialed.

If someone says you have no journalism training (if that's the case), ignore that argument. Journalism is nothing special other than trying to get your facts straight and make it interesting. My motto has always been: If journalism was tough, it wouldn't be journalists doing it.

Good luck.

[Beeeej]

[Q]ugarte Wrote:
 [Q2]billhoward Wrote:
In theorgy, media credentials would be easier to come by [/Q]
And I'd apply for one. Does this have anything to do with what Beeeej was talking about?[/q]
I was talking about something?

Seriously - huh?   ::help::

Beeeej

[CowbellGuy]

ELynah.com is not a source of news, nor will it ever be. It's about multimedia. Photos and video, along with stats and a forum in support. If you want news, go to USCHO or Cornell's site. There seems to be a lot of mediocre written journalism for college hockey, but almost no photojournalism, so there's clearly a need for it. I grew up in a house of photojournalists and have been doing it since I was 14, so clearly I'm biased, but it's at least as legitimate as the tradidional written type. The internet and digital photography has enabled delivery in very timely and practical fashion, making it all the more effective. We keep hearing people remembering Larry Baum's photography from the Sun with fondness, but has anyone ever brought up a college hockey writer they remember? Good photography is harder to come by than good writing and I can't imagine Cornell Hockey is in any position or would have any real reason to not want more publicity, especially the free kind. At any rate, I've e-mailed the SID.

[ugarte]

[Q]Beeeej Wrote:

 [Q2]ugarte Wrote:
 [Q2]billhoward Wrote:
In theorgy, media credentials would be easier to come by [/Q]
And I'd apply for one. Does this have anything to do with what Beeeej was talking about?[/Q]
I was talking about something?

Seriously - huh?    

Beeeej[/q]

[Q]Beeeej Wrote:
Better, I hope (or at least different) than the one TBell's girlfriend made at Lake Placid. Unless we want the players' girlfriends to be collecting dollar bills for the program.[/q]

[Beeeej]

[Q]CowbellGuy Wrote:
We keep hearing people remembering Larry Baum's photography from the Sun with fondness, but has anyone ever brought up a college hockey writer they remember? [/q]
Well, I was kind of partial to Arthur's columns in the Ithaca Times, but your point is well taken.

Beeeej

[Beeeej]

Oh.  I didn't think I was really talking about media credentials.

Beeeej

[billhoward]

Power of the press belongs to the person who owns it. Similarly, control of the web site vests in the guy who controls that.

However: print pubs have a finite edit well. You run one more story on bowling, you have to run one less story on golf. A web site can post more and more stuff and not run out of space.

It could be the Sun posting a game story and analysis an hour after the game is over, but that's not happening right now, and the Sun is the worse off for not doing it, yet. There's no reason an eLynah or another site couldn't do it as well, and maybe provide a different perspective from the cornellbigred.com site which is PR not journalism.

If eLynah doesn't want to have a section for news/analysis, okay, but it's not as if posting a game story and analysis means you room for 100 fewer forum comments for six fewer photos.

Hey, I love photography too. I got into Cornell based on a bunch of high school photojournalism awards. It sure wasn't the GPA. And I love writing as well. Love to see more of both here. Site is still a fine place to be regardless.

[cornelldavy]

[Q]CowbellGuy Wrote:
 has anyone ever brought up a college hockey writer they remember? [/q]


People here seem to remember Mike Volonnino quite well.

[CowbellGuy]

Let me rephrase. I'm not vehemently opposed to having news on ELynah, but it would have to be quality, unbiased reporting and I would need someone else to handle contentent and editing entirely. I can make a place for it, but I don't have time to add anything else to my workload. If anyone is seriously interested, by all means contact me. But if it's another thing I would have to shoulder, it won't happen. As far as credentials go, there's plenty of room for more photographers. A writer would probably need space in the press box, which is certainly finite and athletics would likely be less inclined to go along.

[CUlater 89]

The coaches and the players tend to remember the better reporters.  Schafer has good memories of certain reporters from when he was an assistant at Cornell, as does Nieuwendyk.

There was some excellent writing in the late 80s and early 90s from the likes of Riad El-Dada '86, Jeff Lampe '89, Toby Dorsey '89 and Jeremy Schaap '91 -- stories that won the Sun some awards.

And there was some poor writing from Tom Fleishman (sp?) of the Journal.