From the Globe & Mail to Fark.
From the Red Deer Advocate to Metro to the Squamish Chief.
From former co-workers to rivals in the Kamloops media.
From the Kamloops Daily News' city editor, to Kamloops' CFJC reporter James Peters.
From CBC Radio's "As It Happens", to Yahoo Sports.
In the blogosphere, there was this blog. And this blog. And this blog. And this one. And that one and that one.
Heck, even Spike TV's blog mentioned it.
And then there is Twitter: Terry Jones, Jones again, James Mirtle, Steve Simmons, Simmons again, Ryan Rishaug (former Blazer player there), Gordon McIntyre, Jeff Marek, Patrick King, Sara Orlesky, Ben Kuzma, John MacKinnon, Chris Botta, Greg Wyshynski, Lloyd Hamshaw (former WHL communications director), and Hamshaw again. And those are just the original tweets that I found in a quick search - I'm not even touching the hundreds of people who have re-tweeted those originals to their own followers.
What do all these people and publications all have in common: they all support Gregg Drinnan and/or condemn the Blazers' actions - and thus all spell bad P.R. for the Western Hockey League and the Kamloops Blazers. Regardless of which side of this issue you are on, the WHL's reputation has been a loser. This is a P.R. disaster for them.
The Blazers banned Drinnan in a letter on December 22nd. He and the Kamloops Daily News went public with the ban on January 4th. Today is January 9th, and the issue is not resolved. And it won't be resolved for at least another two days yet - until the meeting between the paper, the team, and the league on Tuesday.
The WHL admits that it knew about the Blazers' plans on or even before December 22. That was 18 days ago. They had to have known that once the ban became public, it was going to turn into a P.R. crapfest for the league. But it still took 3 weeks for the league to get everyone into a room to resolve things. Which just begs the question: What took so long to get this issue resolved?
Regardless of which side you are on, I think we can all agree that this should have been over and done with a long, long time ago.
6 comments:
If this was any other time of year I think they would have met quicker but with the trade deadline tomorrow it made sense to put it one day after.
The WHL is attempting to not offend Gagliardi rather than support the media as it should in this clear cut case.
The best time to deal with it would have been the day it happened - or as soon as possible (considering the Christmas holidays) after that.
Three weeks later is too late.
Waiting until after the deadline is a bad idea - if the Blazers make any trades today or tomorrow, readers of the Daily News are not going to hear any comments about the trades from the players or GM, because Drinnan isn't allowed to talk to them.
Who's suffering there? The fans. The league is complicit in this debacle for not taking action sooner.
a classic case of disconnect from the organization.
We have fans that complain to our blogger, ( Andy Kemper) because he does not criticize the players, team, or the organization. He is just a puppet !
The Globe and Mail has referred to the Western Hockey League as a "bush league" and in this instance they are completely correct. Ron Robison looks like a lap dog in this instance. To suggest in the press that he thinks the Blazers have a "legitimate concern" appears to be nothing more than an attempt to ajudicate this in favour of the Blazers, notwithstanding the league policies. If that be the case Robison has no business being the WHL leader. He should resign forthwith. Censorship is alive and well in Kamloops and the WHL. Since when do newspapers and radio stations have to be the PR department of some Jr hockey team? The League has already been given a big black eye over this. If they don't fine the Blazers forthwith, apologize to Drinnan, and make it clear to all member teams that the Blazers conduct and method is not acceptable, they will be evicerated in the papers worldwide. They are bush league at this point and their response will confirm or deny that label.
Shame on the WHL for dragging this out. They should be enforcing their own media policy, as you said, the day they learned of this fiasco.
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