NHL.com and other media sites

So I'm out of sj now, pretending to teach English and play with kids in Morocco, but I go today to log on to NHL.com to check out the playoff race.

Everything, it seems, that I had to apply for way back when is now out there for everyone, or so it seemed to me.

When I logged in, I was taken to the basic NHL page.

I'm not sure of what I, as a as-far-as-they-know media member, have "exclusive" rights to as news.

Is this something new new: making absolutely all raw material available to fans?

If it is the case that everyone has the same access to news releases as writers do, is that a good thing or a bad thing?

We report games objectively, but some of the nuts-and-bolts stuff -- so-and-so signed, etc. -- doesn't really need our background to stand alone as news.

Would a fan rather read a Q&A from Mike Babcock straight from NHL.com, or do they prefer me to use those quotes in a story?

Does giving Joe Fan access to what we essentially add to and filter affect our standing with the community?

 

I don't think so. I love NHL.com and the information that can be garnered from it, but I think fans realize they're going to be getting a varnished version of the league.

When it comes to the unsavory parts of the league, however, like the Montreal players getting arrested in Tampa a while back, that's going to be our domain. So are the local angles only the beat reporters can provide, and breaking news first. Most NHL.com 'news' is official, they don't say anything before the press release is issued. That's certainly not the case for traditional media.

The same thing applies for trade rumors. Before the deadline in our area, one of the nightly notes off games was who was in attendence from other teams, and what that could mean as far as possible trades. They had a rumor board on NHL.com, but nowhere near that provided by local outlets or the major national sites like TSN.ca.