Give us more Terry Frei, please!

Give us more Terry Frei, please!

In the interest of full disclosure, I was probably one of the more rabid fans in Preds nation to call Dater out for his sideways post on our opening night attendance figures. I have still have some things I'd like to say about his mother, but I will leave them out here because I really don't think they really add much to the discussion at this point.

All that said, journalists report the news. Dater is a blogger. Maybe he also writes for a newspaper; but in either case, I classify him as an op-ed writer. Op-eds are not news. It would have been one thing to report Nashville's attendance figures and talk about the team's lease, the CBA, revenue-sharing, etc. But the minute he said the Predators should get out of Nashville, he made a normative judgment and ceased to be a journalist. We pounced on him because we know what our numbers are, we know what we're up against in terms of economic and growth perspectives. What we – a passionate fanbase who voluntarily and in an unpaid capacity pound the Nashville pavement literally every day to help increase sales and revenues – don't appreciate from Dater was his use of his position with a network that has an exclusive national television deal with the league to blast out something totally subjective; for those who might accuse me of the same, I defy you to find any other Versus staff who have been so critical, at least in the post-lockout era. In short, I hate Dater for the same reason I hate Burnside over at ESPN. If you're going to report, report. But if you're going to blog opinions, be prepared for the blowback. That's the beauty of web 2.0 platforms like blogs and social networking sites; the content is regulated via crowdsourcing. Sounds to me like Dater doesn't like people disagreeing with him; I blog about politics and work in social media, and I know what a challenge it can be to face criticism from what is literally a GLOBAL audience. But as a political blogger, I also developed some nuance over time (…”some”…); I didn't tuck my tail and flee the space.

Whether or not Dater uses Twitter isn't really a problem for me, and shouldn't really be for anyone else either. Twitter (or lack thereof) is not Dater's problem. Publishing opinion pieces and unconfirmed rumors from second and third-hand sources under the guise of a nationally-credentialed hockey journalist is Dater's problem. He is dishonest in what he does and abusive to boot. In any case, his fans will still be able to read his blog, and his enemies (like me) will still be able to rip him on his blog. I can see how some see this as a step backwards, and maybe it is; but Twitter still isn't as popular as, say, Facebook, and its growth has plateaued. Yes, I get my news here most of the time, but it's not the only platform on the web. This is not like losing George Stephanopolous.

This post was mentioned on Twitter by voteforgrant: Why the departure of @adater is a bad move – See You Later, Dater http://bit.ly/8LOOly...