Hindsight is 20/20

As time continues to fly by throughout my internship at CSN I still am loving every second of what I am doing.  The other day Mary was doing a blog about the Red Sox I dug through the sporting archives that is my brain to remember the best Bruins fights of recent memory.  I clearly remember some totally awesome PJ Stock fights like this one, this one, or even this one.  I chose this fight between the Ottawa Senators and Boston Bruins as my favorite.  Mary ended up agreeing and including it in her blog for the day.  I was very happy to help.  Being a lifelong Boston sports fan is an extreme advantage in the location where I am right now.  I know all the monumental events in Boston folk lore, ones that not all people will remember, and other tidbits that are so pointless that I can't find a You-Tube video or even picture.  My hometown connection gives me the chance to reference moments from the past.

I got a chance to help make an already posted story better with the wondrous powers of the internet and previous knowledge of the Red Sox season.  Sean McAdam wrote a terrific article about 10 specific games that led to the downfall of our beloved Red Sox this season.  My responsibility was to go into the archives of the season, find these specific game recaps, and create a link to the new article.  This task would enable readers to (unfortunately) relive the pain of what happened in these individual games.

This was a powerful lesson for me and my internship.  I learned that history is a powerful tool to use.  It gives you insight into what events built up to the present.  Using historic knowledge that you may have can only enrich the story that you are writing.  Like they say "hindsight is 20/20" and you should never things that have passed, good or bad.  They can only do you good in the writing business.

CSN at a Standstill

Primed and ready for an eventful day, the CSN web staff is working hard to find news to reveal to the public.  "The site is down!" comes from the office of Jason Levine.  Suddenly our day has been put to a halt.  Not just a small halt either.  The site was down from 2:00 to 7:00 and it reverted our news back to the previous week. So, in a nutshell people did not get up to date news from us because scheduled maintenance took place during the peak news hour of the day.  That sounds reasonable right?  This wasnt just New England either, this problem resonated throughout the CSN branches throughout the country.  The worst part is both Art and my good friend (and former CSN all-star) Timothy Meagher tell me that this issue happens all the time, and causes a ruckus every time it happens. So, on behalf of the entire CSN community, thanks a lot Platformic!

Because of the standstill I got to do some new and different activities throughout the day!  The first thing I got to do was to sort through the e-mails going to Mike Felger for his Hey Felger! segment.  There were some really good questions from fans, but for every good one there was an equally awful one.  After looking over the questions,  we then forwarded them to Mike for him to answer them.

Then, I got a chance to do a little more REAL intern work.  I had to help do some financial work for Bill.  I was responsible for looking through a massive (and i mean massive) pile of receipts from a writers road trip.  I had to correspond the receipts to another sheet of paper.  It was tedious work.  It really wasn't too too bad.

RIGHT NOW:  There is a VERY intense conversation between Sherrod Blakely and Kyle Draper about the who the top three players in the NBA are. This conversation has been going on for 30 minutes (and counting.) Draper is not thrilled that Sherrod is not including LeBron James in his top three.  This is so entertaining... and informative.

Pat Burns died today, then commented on his own death?

"There is absolutely nothing going on today," says Mary Paoletti as we search twitter for news and a potential Wicked Good Sports story idea.  We spoke too soon.  There WAS nothing, that was until the Pat Burns saga began.

For anyone outside the sporting world who does not know who Pat Burns is.  Shame on you.   Pat Burns is a legendary coach in the National Hockey League and former coach or our dear Boston Bruins.  Unfortunately Burns was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.  Many media outlets over the past couple weeks have been reporting that Burns' condition has been deteriorating.

This morning CTV in Ottawa reported that Burns lost his battle with cancer.  So, as all news stories do, the topic then went through twitter faster than anyone could say... he is alive!  That's right readers, Pat Burns did not die.  In fact, he probably got to read the stories celebrating his life before they got pulled from their respective sites.

 A family member of Burns commented saying, "Pat is surprised to learn he's dead."  Even Burns got to comment on his death. (as weird as that sounds)  "Here we go again," Burns told TSN's Bob McKenzie. "They're trying to kill me before I'm dead. ... I come to Quebec to spend some time with my family and they say I'm dead. I'm not dead, far [expletive] from it. They've had me dead since June. Tell I'm alive. Set them straight."

How many times do people get to comment to the media about their death?  Today's CSN lesson of the day: don't rush a story just to be the first to get it out.  Get the facts straight, check them several times, then you can write the best, most credible story you can.

The Inez Sainz Influence

Its a slow day in the newsroom today.  I guess I will write about the lack of material there is today.  There are three days until the Patriots game on Sunday, the Sox are just barely still alive, and the Bruins rookie game is tonight.  That is the extent of the news today.

One thing that is still buzzing around the newsroom is the Ines Sainz saga.  To fill anyone in about the situation, Ines Sainz is a a sports reporter for a Mexican news station.  She is a very attractive woman, and pretty much flaunts it by wearing tight clothes and other provocative outfits.  Last week she entered the New York Jets locker room to do an interview with quarterback Mark Sanchez.  Things were said (no one really knows what was said) in the locker room that she deemed inappropriate.  This has started an uproar between the media, players, and viewers alike.  Many people have chimed in on the issue.  We were lucky to have two willing women to talk about it on our site in two different mediums.  Carolyn Manno spoke up about her opinion on the topic in a casual conversation, which then led to her appearance on The Dino Radja Experience (Rich Levine's weekly podcast) to address the situation.  (Link here -- http://is.gd/fdK84 )  Mary Paoletti also got a chance to talk about it in a more comical fashion via Wicked Good Sports.  Mary goes into the locker rooms every week with her coverage of the Patriots.  She even mentions an alternative way to dress this week now that SHE has to go into the Jets locker room.  (Link here -- http://is.gd/fdKyv)  Although I am not an attractive woman... or a woman at all, I still have learned a valuable lesson throughout this story.  I learned that if you want to be taken seriously in the professional world, you must view yourself as a professional and dress the part.

Okay, now on to the casual factor of the day.  Today is the day for Quick Slants at 7:00 pm on CSN (Shameless promo) so Tom Curran was in the office.  Because of the lack of news today, I naturally was looking for something to do.  So, the two of us played catch with a Nerf football, which has been the highlight of my day.

So, in a nutshell, I am still enjoying every second of my internship.  I just have to remember... no news is good news... and very boring.

Filling in the gaps

So...its been over a week since I have last posted.  I have so much to catch up on.  There were some pretty eventful moments in the New England Sports scene.  Not sure when specifically all of these events took place, but they were all important things to me and my internship.  So, this might be somewhat of a scattered post.

I have started to settle into my post here at Comcast Sports.  I am still searching the twitter-verse for important news relevant to our region.  With a ton of news surrounding the New England Patriots, Tom Brady, and Randy Moss I learned a few massive lessons. The first lesson I learned was how important sources are to the sports writing world.  On September 7th I came into work with news swirling about an "imminent" deal for quarterback Tom Brady. The Boston Herald reported the deal... it turned out to be false.  "Imminent" turned out to be a very wrong choice of words.  The news of the false report was the talk of the newsroom.  Needless to say, Tom Brady, and a quick trigger finger by Ian Rapoport were the talk of the Newsroom.  I learned a couple things because of the situation, when a report comes out such as this, give the source FULL credit for two reasons.  1) It was their information first, they put in the work, they should get the credit.  2)  Just in case they did not put the work in and the report is FALSE, it is their head is on the line for the information released.

The second event sent shock-waves through the entire New England sporting world.  Tom Brady was in a car accident in the morning.  Not a whole lot was known about the severity of the incident.  Once again, I arrived to work at 9:00 am and was forced to navigate my way through the fact and fiction of the myriad of reports coming through the Twitter wire that occupied my screen.  For the second day straight Tom Brady was responsible for a days worth of work.  This story was above any contract discussions, this involved the livelihood of not only a sports icon, but others as well.  We sifted through the details and discovered that Brady was alright, but a man in the other vehicle was injured.  Then the media began to dissect every move Brady made, including his motions, his attitude, and even the fact that he wore his helmet during stretches.

Another big event that took place was the debut of Quick Slants.  An interactive show with Tom Curran and Mary Paoletti (you should really check it out).  This show was a pretty big deal.  The set is literally right next to my desk (pictured) and  I got a chance to help out with the rehearsals for the show!  I sat in the production room and sent chat questions to Mary to try and simulate the random questioning from viewers.  I came up with some zingers, I hope it helped.  The show debuted to great numbers as I got to see my co-workers in action... and yes they are as cool as they seem.

I have really learned a lot already throughout my internship, and I have only been here two weeks.  I could not have asked for a better boss.  Art is a great writer, just reading his work (and how quickly he writes it) is impressive and will help me become a better writer.  We will have to see how that goes.


JUST ANNOUNCED: While I was working on this very blog Laurence Maroney was traded to the Denver Broncos. I love when big news comes in!

Straight Up Intern Work

I don't know if I have mentioned it, but Platformic is a very frustrating production system for the web site.  It always seems to fail me at the most inopportune times.  I have suffered from missing cursors about 100 times in my one week here.  I got to deal with Platformic at its finest the other day.

Art described to me that I will be doing "real intern work" and "apologized in advance."  I then found out what I was going to be doing.  There were 2800 stories in the top story database, and I was responsible for deleting all but ten of them.    This is where the annoyance of Platformic comes in.  I have found it never makes ANYTHING easy.  To delete these I had to go to a pull down menu go to "remove this article from feed" hit enter... then a new screen comes up confirming the removed story.  Then take into consideration loading times.  This task took me eight hours (you read it right) possible carpal tunnel in both hands, and excessive amounts of Mountain Dew to complete, but it was done. 

It gave me a sense of gratification when Art gave me a high five after completing the task.  Now, (because of me) instead of news in the top stories being displayed in order of submission they can be placed in order of importance.

Needless to say, the task sucked.  If these are the things I have to do to make a name for myself and show I am dedicated to my dream... so be it.

Breaking News is fun

Since I just starting blogging last night, I haven't got a chance to talk about the hectic afternoon I had on August 31st.

Throughout the day... well... not a whole lot happened.  The only thing I got a chance to post was a brief blurb about Vince Wilfork being willing to play an 18-game season (not a big deal).

Tuesdays are the day for the biggest meeting on CSN property... so I was on my own for about three hours.  Of course, something huge had to happen during that period.

I found out via twitter (and a bunch of loud voices in the newsroom) that Red Sox pitcher Manny Delcarmen had been traded to the Colorado Rockies.  I was the one responsible for posting this breaking news.  The one problem... I've never done something like that before.  So after about a minute, I broke the news to New England as well as I could. 

About a minute after this took place Art came out of his meeting.  We added a few things to the headline as time passed and more information came in.

Considering it was just my second day, the situation was very nerve-racking.  I feel like I did a pretty good job.  Now, I hope no one else gets traded, but if it does happen I will be ready.

The New Guy

The first two days of my internship were exciting and productive...

The time has come for my internship to start.  I head into the building.  The one thing I had in my head was to not be starstruck when I met my new co-workers, who I have read their material and some I have seen on T.V.  Believe it on not, this was a lot easier than I thought it would be.  I immediately met Sherrod Blakely (Celtics insider) and Mary Paoletti (Wicked Good Sports Blog) and they made me feel at home.  They welcomed me to sit down with them and chat until my boss, Art Martone arrived.  Sherrod, a Syracuse grad, began flaunting his Orange paraphernalia to Mary, a UConn grad (a running joke around the office full of Syracuse grads.)

Things were also surprisingly very casual in my first interaction.  For some reason it was very cold in the office, Mary wrapped herself in a blanket that looked eerily like a snuggie.  This, much to her frustration, led to many comments around the office throughout the afternoon.

and i digress...

Art arrived and I began to learn what I would be doing over the duration of my internship.  The base of my day was spend learning the dreaded Platformic media system.  This is the program that is responsible for posting articles and editing the CSN web site.  As I learned the system somewhat quickly, I began searching social network sites like twitter for any stories of importance.  After finding something headline worthy, I was able to write a little something and post it.

My fist post can be found here.  http://www.csnne.com/pages/v1_landing?blockID=300440
Its really nothing special, but it is very exciting seeing your work on a web site for everyone in New England to see.