You never forget your first…
Umm…media credential that is.
Our good friend Nathan Strang is the tech heart and soul at WNYMedia; he was one of the guys from their posse who put the full court press on us a little over a year ago to bring USRT under the WNYMedia umbrella, and facilitated all the mechanics and tech support for us once we made that move.
He also has his own blog which is titled “Buffawhat”. (Disclosure time here about Buffawhat… “Some material may be inappropriate for younger viewers”. Actually, some material would get you beheaded in a few Islamic countries, but I digress.)
This past Saturday, Nate did his first sports assignment for WNYMedia, accompanying me to the Bandits game to shoot photos and video. Today Nate posted a whole bunch of photos and video clips on Buffawhat. It’s all good stuff! More poignant to me was that he shared in detail his sights and sounds of the whole experience as seen through his eyes.
It got me thinking of my media debut, when I attended a game as a member of the “credentialed media”. It was May of 2000, a Buffalo Destroyers arena football game at HSBC Arena. John Augustine, Quarterback of the Buffalo Gladiators and co-host of the Sportsblast public access TV show, was season credentialed by the team and invited Pete and to come along and attend the game as “reporters” to help him cover the game.
Nate’s story today brought back those memories of my “first time”… what i remember most was being able to stand on the field in the end zone and watch the game from that vantage point, and how cool it was to be able to do that. Bob Trimble of the defunct Empire Sports Network was down there with us, making us feel very welcome and at home. I also recall a miserable jackass by the name of Josh Gregory, the team’s media relations person who went out of his way to treat us like pieces of crap. Gratefully he was gone after that season, replaced by a very cool guy named Brendan McDaniels, who is still very much part of our sports media scene to this day. Being able to walk into the locker room to talk to players and attend the post game press conference made us absolutely giddy on that day.
Eight years later and we have graduated from silly Sportsblast to “real” media… but the media experience still does not get old. Walking into the media entrance at the Bell Centre, or Madison Square Garden… and there is a cool looking tag with your name on it waiting for you… and you walk through corridors off limits to regular folk… and there are murals and photos of moments from those teams and buildings and all of a sudden the ghosts come to life. Yeah it’s all good!
Postscript… after Saturday’s game Nate said “Well you brought me into your world so now allow me to bring you into mine.” So I accompanied him to his weekend job at Club Marcella’s, a nightclub in the Theatre District where he D.J.s and barbacks, the first time I had ever been to that place. On this night, they had a charity fund raiser going on… a full blown drag queen show. So I did what any good journalist on deadline would do… I ordered me up a Grand Marnier on the rocks, headed up to the sound and light booth above the dance floor, pulled put the laptop, and did my game story and posted photos (the club was wi-fied), all while watching fabulously dressed and sequined chix with dix strut their stuff onstage. I’ll bet the Buffalo News’ reporter Tom Borrelli, who covers the Bandits, had a far less eventful night!
