IPB Questionnaire Answers: Patty Edition

Here we go with another set of answers to the IPB Blogging Questionnaire (keep ‘em coming, Gentle Blogging-Readers!). This set comes from long-time IPB Irregular, Patty at Penalty Killing. We were looking forward to her answers since she didn’t start blogging until after becoming deeply immersed in the existing hockey blogosphere. You can read her insights here or at her blog.

1. What was your motivation for starting blogging? Has that changed at all in the time you’ve been blogging?

To be honest, Pookie and Schnookie and all the really nice regulars at IPB motivated me to start. I had been thinking about it a while, but I was wholly unmotivated to do it. The first thing that made me think I might try it was not a drive to write or even really express myself, as far as I knew. I just felt bad for the Dallas Stars because there were so few blogs for them.

As far as I knew there was only Andrews Dallas Stars Page, which is a favorite of mine. There were some local sports blogs that just never really won me over, mainly because they’re all so football-centric. I had been reading some general, kind of newsy blogs for a little while, like OffWing Opinion and PuckUpdate and such, but I didn’t fall in love with hockey blogs until I tripped over Covered in Oil right before the 2006 playoffs. And I fell IN LOVE with those guys. They were so funny and so cute and so Canadian and so excited about the Oilers. Then I branched out to all their buddy sites and I just couldn’t get over how much fun they were having and how utterly hilarious they all were. I couldn’t wait to read them every day. Through them I found Battle of California which was also funny and smart. And that’s where I found Interchangeable Parts. When I was reading the first post that BoC sent me to, I remember thinking how great it was to find a hockey blog that used a certain obscure word they used (which I can’t remember!).

Once I started reading, I felt welcome to comment and just started commenting. I found out that there are other people in the world that love hockey as much as I do. And they are not beaten down in the least by my ramblings about the sport and my team. It was so unlike my real life. The more I hung out there, the more urgent my need to talk about the Stars became and I didn’t want to hijack my favorite sites just to talk about the Stars, so I thought I’d just vent on my own blog.

Most of my friends have absolutely no interest in hockey and over the years I’ve finally grown to understand that they don’t want to hear me ramble on about it, either. I hoped that when I started writing posts I could get some of that out of my system so I don’t have to work as hard to keep it to myself in daily conversations.

I’ve never really felt the need to write, but I have always been a talker. I like to think I can make a boring story funny if I tell it right. I have found myself practicing out loud the best way to time the punchline to the story of my drive home from work, or some other mundane series of events. So I thought a blog would be a perfect way to express myself about hockey and the Stars and whatever else came to me, and I could write it the way I talk and not worry about the fact that it won’t be as well-written as my favorite author would write it.

Since I started, I have learned a couple of things about it. One is that I’m not really going to be the center for Stars information, mainly because I’m too lazy to look stuff up. But I do think I have points to make that I can’t find anybody else making, so I’m trying to run with it. Before I started, I wanted to be hilarious all the time, like most of the blogs I read, but I’m working on just writing it and then seeing what I think about it. Instead of trying to find a writing style I like, I’m trying to like the writing style I have.

2. What do you think your blog contributes to the hockey conversation?

Not to sound disingenuous, but I don’t think it really contributes that much. It’s contributing my viewpoint and my feelings on the topic, but the conversation could probably do just as well with out those things. Still, I have enjoyed contributing them so far. The thing I like about it is that, if I want to, I can assume that everybody who reads it is wildly impressed with the pithy observations I’ve made. I can’t see them rolling their eyes or hear them saying, “Sheesh, does she ever talk about anything but hockey?” (Even though I presume that is what’s going on.)

Maybe in a year, if I’m still doing it, I’ll have figured out what I want it to be and will have learned a lot about it and will be much better at it. But if it’s just like it is now in a year, I think I’ll still think it’s fun.

I say all of this about my blog. I do not believe that the blogs I read contribute so little to the conversation. I think they basically are the conversation. I’m contributing to that conversation with my hilarious and pithy comments.

3. What do you want to get out of the blogs you read?

I’m going to come right out and say it: I want it to be funny. Most of the blogs that have charmed me into making them daily reading are funny. If it’s about the Stars, it doesn’t have to be funny, but it’s great if it’s both. I used to just comb the mainstream hockey sites — ESPN, CBS Sportsline, TSN, FoxSports, etc. for news about the Stars and other teams. But once you read one game recap, you’ve read them all, because they’re all using the same AP article.

When I read a hockey blog, I like to get some of the personality of the writer, some hilarity, and some point of view that I can’t get elsewhere. I like stats blogs, too, because, like art, I like to just look at it; I can’t produce it myself. The same is true for the really funny sites.

4. What determines which blogs you read and which you don’t?

I’ll read a site that has personality and is about a team I don’t follow or like. I’ll read a blog about the Stars that has little personality, but it’s about the Stars (I don’t actually know of any of those — there are very few Stars blogs and they’re pretty good–but you know what I mean). I’m not picky about which team it’s about if it’s funny, and I’m not picky about how funny it is if it’s about the Stars. There are even some blogs that I enjoy and I couldn’t tell you what I like about them. I am easily impressed by good writing, and I just love bloggers that get upset when they let a typo escape them. I find it terribly charming when they make fun of some profanity-spewing commenter’s grammar and spelling issues. (I found a huge hockey-loving community I didn’t know was there when I started reading hockey blogs, but I also found a huge community of people who hate having to struggle to decipher a comment.)

I also read a few non-hockey blogs, but much fewer than I used to. I’m pretty much down to CuteOverload.com and Joe Mathlete Explains Today’s Marmaduke.

5. How important is the issue of gaining press access to you as a blogger?

It’s not that important to me at all. I would be too petrified with shyness to actually interview players. But I would not turn one down, that’s for sure. I would love to have that kind of access to the players on a regular basis, because I think over the course of a season, just hanging back at the rear of the press scrums and nodding “hey” to players for six months, I might eventually screw up enough courage to start up a conversation with one of the friendlier ones. Being a blogger hasn’t made me feel any closer to the press box than just reading Yahoo Sports does.

6. To what extent do you feel accountable for the content of your blog? How concerned do you think readers should be about the authority and accountability of your blog?

I feel as accountable for the content of my blog as I do for anything I say. And that’s pretty accountable. I try not to lie or be too mean in real life, so I would try not to in my blog. I will say that I might be a little more critical on my blog than I would be to someone’s face, but I can’t be critical to someone’s face at all. That’s why I got out of management. But I do criticize players and management and broadcasters, etc. I’m not as bold as some, and I actually feel a little guilty when I do it, but I think I’m still within reasonable bounds.

Whether or not I would “report” something that might not be true is hard to say. I don’t really think I “report” anything, so it’s fairly moot. I don’t like gossip-type stuff that much, so I don’t think I would drift too far into that.

Readers shouldn’t be any more concerned about my authority than anybody else’s. I have no inside information, or any hope to ever get any, so anything I might bring up is going to have been reported somewhere else that I feel is legitimate and I’ll link to it. I am new to it so who knows if I’ll ever go over to the dark side, but I have no interest in being the first to break a story. I am only interested in telling a reader what I think about something they have probably already heard.

I’m blogging to express myself. I’m not trying to become a writer or a journalist or even a professional blogger. I just want to get my thoughts down so people can join me in the conversation.

7. How concerned are you about the authority and accountability of the blogs you read? Do you find it difficult to judge the authority and accountability of the blogs you read?

This isn’t a concern of mine, really. I tend to drift away from blogs that overrate themselves as authorities. I just don’t really think about it that much. If I were reading blogs that were affecting decisions I was making in my job, or something like that, I’d be much more careful, but as it is, I just read the ones I like and don’t read the ones that irk me. If they seem to be making stuff up (I’m talking to you, Eklund!) I just don’t read them. If they seem to base their opinions on reasonable things (like Spector), then I keep reading them.

I don’t really find it difficult to decide if the blog I’m reading is telling me the truth, I don’t think. To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever thought about that. I think it’s my general distaste for stories that are gossip-y. And if they’re trying to be objective, then I’m not interested. I get my news from TSN or Yahoo or Dallas Morning News and I get my fun from blogs.

8. What value, if any, do you think blogging brings to the NHL?

This is a good question. Blogging and reading blogs in general bring a TON to my enjoyment of the NHL. I have a much broader view than I did when I was on my own. I think it brings a lot to the feeling of community amongst NHL fans. I don’t know what it necessarily brings to the business of the NHL, though. I would really have to study on that. The stats guys around the blogosphere would need to do surveys and polls and gather some data to see what it actually brings to the business of hockey. If it’s any indication, I have already paid cash money for four separate games this season and it’s just December. That’s already more than I ever have paid to see before in one season (I used to get three or four a year in the company suite) and I plan to go to several more.

I believe wholeheartedly that it’s because I found other people to talk to out there, that love hockey as much as I do.

[Originally written for Penalty Killing, 12/05/07 by Patty.]