***FAIR WARNING TO THE AUDIENCE: I am taking one sentence and blowing it up into a full-on essay response. Long post alert. Consider yourselves warned.***
It was all going so well right up to 2nd last sentence of the piece:
I’ll be diving into the comments section, too — which, in a truly revolutionary development, appears to be civil and engaging.
Excellent marketing plan there. Let's close this piece with an ask for subscribers to chip in their hard-earned money to read more material, then follow it up with a pretty unsubtle shot the very same audience you're courting.
I don't have a subscription to the site. At this point I don't particularly plan on getting one either (comments like that aren't the reason, but they don't help). But if I had to hazard a guess as to why the comment sections are better than the internet at large, it would be that: a) the service is newer and the audience smaller, meaning that fewer audience members overall are going to be idiots. anywhere else. and b) being a pay-for-content/access service, it's weeded out the part of the potential audience most likely to be idiots, because few are likely to want to pay money just to hassle and viciously disagree with the writers when they can take to message boards and social media and do it for free.
Secondarily, stuff like this is part of why those fans exist. Instead of trying to work through those issues, or at the very least take the high road and avoid confrontations altogether you fight back. Just for example on this site, many of your comments ended up tinged with a biting edge or passive-aggressive snarking or condescension:
kkurzcsn said:
Just a little information on how these things work.
When the Marleau story came out on our site, it was quickly confirmed by other reporters like Bob McK and Craig Custance. They check with their own sources, which were probably different than mine. You can still choose not to believe it, but just because I report it and they follow up on it doesn't mean we're getting it from the same people. I'm quite sure they spoke to people that I didn't speak with, yet the conclusion was essentially the same.
Not only was he open to a trade, he was actively seeking one at one point. That may have changed, and in fact probably has, since he's still here. Does he want to stay after this season? There's no indication that he does, and there's no indication that he doesn't. When asked about it at the beginning of this year, the first thing he mentioned was that he has "a year left on his contract." And he's also never denied that he wanted to move on.
kkurzcsn said:
Maybe it's just me, but I don't need a calculator when I'm tracking the game score. It's usually right up there on the jumbotron, too, which is very helpful.
kkurzcsn said:
Nope, never happened even once, "Gene."
kkurzcsn said:
Some of you guys really like keeping your heads in the sand. ESPN confirmed my report, no one on the Sharks denied it including the player, head coach or captain, and others like Bob McKenzie reported it was Marleau who wanted to explore trade possibilities.
kkurzcsn said:
Let me get this straight - you think that Doug will make a move based on what we write about the team? You should pay more attention to the timeline here: Doug has made some very specific comments about the future of the team, unprovoked, and some of us writers have reacted to them. That's our job.
Glad to hear it. I'm actually not a fan of yours either!
granted that without context some of these probably seem more benign, but even if they weren't meant with any amount of vitriol I would contend that a writer should be able choose his words more carefully to avoid the appearance of such reactions entirely. They also reflect about a quarter of your total engagement on this board, which is not a good sign if it appears that a significant chunk of your limited time on this site has been spent getting into dust-ups with other posters.
(also fair warning to the other posters: I have removed the post ID tags from those quotes to prevent them from linking back to the original threads. While it certainly wouldn't be difficult to find said threads and posts, please do not go back to any of them to post responses, and please do not respond specifically to them here either. I've reposted them for illustrative purposes with respect to the point I'm making, not to rehash any old incidents that have been off the radar for months/years)
While I won't pretend that that the audience here has treated you well or with a high degree of civility over the course of your time with the Sharks (and I will admit that I have a certain amount of fondness for playfully citing the CSN advertising line of you being "deep inside" whenever there's an apparently missed story or obvious bit of reporting), it's not like you've done a lot to ingratiate yourself to the audience either.
I've seen things on twitter too, not just the HF posts I quoted. It doesn't look good when you appear to be guilty of the same behavior that you chastise the audience for. and to trot out a well-worn line from being a site moderator here, "he started it" doesn't make responding in kind acceptable.
I should also point out that both you and Brodie Brazil started out in similar circumstances with regards to the audience reaction around here. Most people didn't like Brodie at the beginning of his tenure with the team. But over time he got in good with the audience. He had some fun with them. He went on one of the Infestation bus trips (ostensibly to do a story about it, but from everything I remember he actually did hang out with people in the process.) He engaged on Twitter in a positive way even when it wasn't initiated by positivity from the audience. He didn't react negatively to the criticism that was levied against him or the mocking from the peanut gallery. And now most fans on here like him quite a bit. On the other hand, your image on here has been anything from mildly standoffish to actively argumentative and condescending based on how you have responded to challenges or criticisms of your reporting style or depth of information. Regardless of how much that view represents reality, it appears like you simply haven't done much to remedy the issue either.
That quoted line from the Athletic is just the latest in such behaviour. You give a piece that is heartfelt and personal, full of quotes and experiences and little to no need for any sort of address to the audience themselves except for the acceptably matter-of-fact statement about how you weren't always well-received (the inclusion that such feelings extended to other media people was a revelation and kinda interesting though. That said, your applied reason for the dislike is unsettling and largely incorrect. We'll get back to that in due time though). It's the kind of thing that could actually humanize you to the fans who have treated you like the devil to this point.
And then the house of cards falls apart right at the conclusion by indirectly calling conversation away from The Athletic uncivilized and unengaging. Because people are going to love being addressed like they're crass, uncouth morons or shallow, bleating idiots.
Also, for what it's worth, I don't believe people in the audience disliked you because you were "an outsider" as you state in the piece. They disliked you because you would treat dissent with derision and categorize part of your audience with broad, Joe-Morgan-esque stereotypes like the basement dwelling stat nerd who can't comprehend the game without a spreadsheet or calculator because s/he's not part of it or never played it (given that a cursory look at hockeydb and elite prospects shows that you have zero hockey playing experience down as far as the low end of elite amateur play like Jr B or NCAA DIII, such comments seem a trifle ironic). Your status had little to do with fan reaction. Fans tend to be sharply critical of most reporters, especially new ones. It was all in how you chose to deal with those reactions.
It would seem that your move to the Athletic will do little to change that, but may allow you to go on believing that we all hate you because you're different. Which isn't true. If you want us to stop misrepresenting you as a know-nothing or an interloper or a reactive blowhard, perhaps you should stop misrepresenting us as collective know-nothings, petulant children, or worthless geeks who don't understand what we can't formulate in Excel. And if you wanted people on here to actually contribute to the continuation of print journalism as you provide it, perhaps you could've made your plea without taking one last swipe as you head out the door from free coverage to pay-to-read. Because I'm not paying $5 a month to have someone tell me I don't understand the game as well as him if I disagree.
In closing, I also want to take another moment to address the rest of the poster base here: Please do not turn this post into an opportunity to attack Kevin. I've done my best to tune the above to be within bounds of the site rules. But I know that's a difficult thing to do in situations like this, so I would ask that you be very careful if you intend to make similar comments.