Weighing-In On The Creativity Conversation

If you follow the blogosphere and look at Puck the Media like I do, you'll see the post Mr. Steve Lepore had about bloggers creativity being ruined due to the access. He cites Yahoo's Puck Daddy and AOL Fanhouse as examples to this ordeal, Fanhouse being looked at a little closer. While we had this discussion on our Draft Show Portion One, it's begs to be talked about a little more, especially with the season going on and stories from blogs being thrown up and down.

I can see Steve's point. There's a lot more you could do when you have the access to. If you're going to get down and dirty with things on the blog, and have the access, it'd be nice to see something out of the usual norm of things. That's what makes Puck the Media so unique because you don't have someone devoting their time to the happenings of hockey broadcasting and solely focusing on critquing the media. It's a great concept and Steve does a fine job of doing what he does. And I mean, you look at all the blogs out there and it's an outlet used for people to get the "everyman" kind of response to games and what-not, which is a refreshing change from the normal mainstream media reviews and insight of the game-- even better than most op-ed pieces you can find in the newspaper.

That said, most of the people at Puck Daddy and Fanhouse can't have that kind of independence, mostly due to the fact they could have assignments, like was revealed about the Chris Botta case, or they have to realize that they are a representitive of a bigger company and don't want to risk their jobs, reputation or the reputation of the company they work for by doing something so out of the norm. They have a little more at stake than most of the people out there in the independent kind of blog. Plus, who's to say the independent blogs would be able to do something they would want to do if given the access. Knowing if they make one false move while attending, they could be at risk of never getting that access again, they could tone it down when in attendance more than they would on their blog.

Now, luckily-- I have been able to get credentialed in the past and am glad for the chance to. I've never really done much out of the norm, mostly due to the lack of imagination. I've ask some off-the-wall questions in some interviews, but mostly just to lighten the mood or see how some people react. Plus, I don't think I'm well enough known to do something pretty crazy and get away with it in good humor. It's definitely a different world when you actually get down to the bowels of any arena. Most of the times, you could be intimidated in terms of what you want to do and if it's your first time there, get a little flustered when you actually get your chance to do something with it.

While Steve make a point of bloggers doing the same thing that mainstream media folks do, sometimes it's a necessary evil. You may not want to do something like, in fact the complete opposite will be true-- yet, going the simple route may be the best route at the time. Hindsight of what could have been done and what should have been done with the access given is 20/20-- if you want to continute to be granted that access, the safe route is always the way to go.