Friday, June 19, 2009

Oilersnation.com

Oilersnation.com is a website that provides news and columnists covering the Edmonton Oilers. What started out as a simple blog site with some readable posts from a “Wanye Gretz” has now become an example of social media success.

Initially a couple bloggers would post their opinions and thoughts about the Oilers, opposing teams, players and management. Soon after, a couple more bloggers joined providing more detailed stats and some different perspectives.

Included are Jason Gregor, host of Just a Game on the Team 1260 and Robin Brownlee, a former sports columnist for the Edmonton Journal and the Edmonton Sun. Both guys are well connected and have tonnes of experience covering local sports.

Once they joined, the site became a primary source for breaking news and analysis.

A big step was taken on Wednesday.

Brownlee wrote an interesting article discussing how the NHL Entry Draft in Montreal will only have a few traditional media outlets present.

Tough economic times have newspapers, like a lot of businesses, slashing
budgets. Compounding matters, newspapers have been dying a slow death for years
now — the reasons are many.

The people behind the website decided to start a paypal account to pay for Brownlee’s trip to Montreal to cover the draft. According to the latest article on Oilersnation.com, donations are still coming in. As of Friday afternoon, Brownlee is unable to make the trip so his colleague Jason Gregor is the next possible candidate to cover the draft.

Talk about power to the people. Instead of relying on the large sports media outlets like TSN and Sportsnet, a group of Oiler fans have come together and sponsored an individual, with the necessary credentials, to cover the event for them.

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