Rebuilding the Promise of Rocktober: Community Outreach
by Russ Oates on May 18, 2009 9:32 AM MDT
in Thoughts From Up High
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PrintPurple Row opened its doors on 28 April 2005, the season in which the Rockies lost 95 games. The losses alone could have turned someone off from blogging about the team, but Rox Girl persisted throughout the rest of the season (the offseason was a different story). Then in 2006, the monster grew a bit larger as I moved from the community to being one of the head bloggers here. Rox Girl and I continued to build Purple Row. On 1 June 2006, Rockies assistant GM/VP baseball operations Bill Geivett posted a diary here (FanPosts took the place of diaries when we transitioned to the SBN 2.0 platform in March 2008). We were still a small community, but there was proof that the Rockies organization knew about us and thought us to be credible.
2007 came, which led to those 21 days. Those 21 days that we'll always remember. The Rockies looked as if they were no longer fighting for defeat. The fans were waiting for this moment for so long. Then the Rockies fell flat on their faces against the Red Sox. In 2008 the Rockies returned to the same failed state that had persisted for years. The Rockies remain there this season.
No, we're not going to have another Rocktober in that way, but the promise of Rocktober that the Rockies had finally turned a corner is still broken. One step to rebuilding that promise is #6 in Rox Girl's manifesto: community outreach. I made a comment about how the organization could do that, and I want to expand on that here.
Bill Geivett's appearance here almost three years ago was fleeting. Maybe that's because the Rockies are afraid of, or, more likely, don't understand the evolving media. Oh, there are teams and leagues that do treat blogs differently. Athletics Nation, SBN's flagship blog, has interviewed Billy Beane, Lewis Wolff, and a few others that don't come to mind right now. AZ Snakepit, our friendly rival, has interviewed Josh Byrnes. Did you know that the NFL credentialed two of our football bloggers to be at the NFL Draft? And look at the front page of the NHL.com website. Did you catch it? They actually link to an SBN hockey website when appropriate.
Remember back in February when we were wondering who Joe Gorshe was? Through certain channels I eventually wound up asking for an interview with the guy and was basically told it wouldn't be a good idea. You know, Purple Row is a blog and all. Yep, can't do an interview with someone who we will most likely never hear about again. Just because we're a blog.
We're just a blog? We don't have any big entity behind us? SB Nation isn't big enough yet? Well, hey, look at the bottom of the page. We are an official partner with Yahoo! Sports. Doesn't that give us some legitimacy? It gives Tim Brown some legitimacy, I guess. Even with something like this. (Yes, yes, I know Tim Brown has a couple decades of work behind him, but still.)
We're not out here to make friends, but we're certainly not trying to be the enemy. We are just fans who want honest answers. Obfuscation might work with others, but it doesn't lead to honest answers.
Here it is: The Rockies organization knows about this site and reads it. But if the organization wants to build a better relationship with its fans, reach out to them in 21st-century ways. Bill Geivett's entry here was a move in the right step, but that was three years ago. Others should come here and post. Oh, I don't mean that they should stick around and just make comments here and there. But why not create a FanPost here to speak directly to the fans, answer their questions? Members won't take you seriously or believe that you are who you claim to be? E-mail Rox Girl or I so we can help smooth things out. Or let us interview you. I'm sure RockiesMagicNumber would love to meet Dan O'Dowd in person and interview him. You have nothing to fear from us, unless you fear being asked honest questions that seek honest answers. Again, we are not your enemy.
It has been 572 days since the promise of Rocktober has gone unfulfilled, and all it takes is a minute to start rebuilding that promise in a small way.
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/trims nails with dagger
We’re all very, very friendly.
/throws dagger into apple.
We are. We’re passionate, we care about this team more than 99% of people on planet Earth, and we want to help make it better.
/cuts apple
So have a slice.
NOW.
I love Greg Reynolds and I may be slightly ashamed to admit it.
An interview w/representative Q's from PR would be great
Perhaps even start a thread to request questions, have us vote on the ones to submit. Or at least have the PR heads (Russ, Rox Girl and ?) filter/edit out of the stuff we know O’Dowd would never give a decent answer to (“Why won’t you fire Clint Hurdle, he is obviously 100% loser”), and pick representative Q’s.
Nope,
press them to answer questions that they normally wouldn’t give a decent answer to.
"If we never try, we shall never succeed." - Abraham Lincoln
Purple Row - Covering all your Rockies needs!
and that's kind of the nature of the blogosphere
We want the truth about stuff. We don’t want tailored questions and canned answers. I don’t want my curiosities to be dodged, I want to know things.
Matt Murton status: Freed
Garrett Atkins status: Not Traded
Clint Hurdle status: Still Employed by the Rockies
by Andrew Martin on May 18, 2009 11:05 AM MDT up reply actions
Sure, that will work.
What I mean is, no one is going to answer certain questions. Don’t bother asking them. Everyone is asking them about Hurdle, why would you get a different answer?
Agreed
I am all for more outreach towards the blogging community, and by extension the fan community, but we have to temper expectations with the knowledge that we’re not going to get some sort of brutal honesty that the brass wouldn’t also give to the media. If you want to be treated like ‘legitimate media’ (for lack of a better term), then you’re going to get the same lines that the ‘legitimate media’ gets.
Other franchises have sponsored ‘blogger days’ and the like and I think it might be a good move for the Rockies to do something similar. But, yeah, if we think we’re going to get ‘Clint Hurdle will be fired by July 4th unless this this and this happens’ or ‘The reason we haven’t traded Garrett Atkins is because he absolutely blows’ out of the front office I think we’ll all end up disappointment.
Opening up lines of dialogue, however, are a good and necessary step in the right direction. Like the post says, we’re not the enemy. We want to see the franchise succeed, and we care enough even during tough times to ask questions and ponder solutions on our own. I think there’s almost unanimity here that if we could see Clint Hurdle, Dan O’Dowd and the Monfort Brothers succeed, we’d be overjoyed, so there’s not any malice towards anybody currently occupying the big organizational positions.
What we really want to know – or maybe it’s just me, I don’t know – is why have things gone so wrong since 2007, what is being done on all levels to address it, and when does long-term success start to become this franchise’s goal.
Staying on the sunny side of Blake Street since 1993.
The Shawn Chacon Experience - Life as a Rockies fan, one day at a time: Because we're all still recovering from those nine blown saves.
by Franchise26 on May 18, 2009 11:38 AM MDT up reply actions
Yeah, what he said.
I love Greg Reynolds and I may be slightly ashamed to admit it.
by Silverblood on May 18, 2009 11:41 AM MDT up reply actions
Unfortunately
the Rockies are far from mastering the “blogger day” concept, especially considering the “fan fest” concept is still seemingly foreign to them.
"Admirably obsessive." - Uni Watch, March 24th, 2009
NA34 | HK | RMN
They had fan fest in the early days
I have an autographed stock photo of Don Zimmer and Howard Johnson that I got from there. Unfortunately, fan fest costs money, and we all know the current budgetary considerations in the eyes of Brothers Monfort.
Thanks for this, Russ
It’s been a frustration of mine, and I’m glad you brought up the Gorshe thing.
Matt Murton status: Freed
Garrett Atkins status: Not Traded
Clint Hurdle status: Still Employed by the Rockies
Russ..someday you are going to write a great novel..
and I am going to read it.
Check out my Rockies comic strip at:
Rock Drive 1.4
Leave the novels
to Silverblood. You’ll be paying expensive prices on my academic books about Clintonian foreign policy.
"If we never try, we shall never succeed." - Abraham Lincoln
Purple Row - Covering all your Rockies needs!
Dammit..
That’s going to be the most boring book I ever read!!! I was hoping for something along the lines of, “In my Mother’s Basement: The history of blogging during the Rocktober glory years.”
Check out my Rockies comic strip at:
Rock Drive 1.4
Oh, well,
I might write that memoir.
"If we never try, we shall never succeed." - Abraham Lincoln
Purple Row - Covering all your Rockies needs!
I would read Silver's too..
but I would need a dictionary to help me get through it. Today I learned 17 new words just from looking at her Scotland Photo Album.
Check out my Rockies comic strip at:
Rock Drive 1.4
New words, or just word with an extra "u" in them?
I also read her Scottish diary. That girl likes castles. She can’t half write, too.
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