Future of LI Media: Uncertain Forecast

As I sat in on the Press Club of Long Island’s forum on the Future of Long Island Media at Newsday on Thursday night, it became obvious that the esteemed panel — and the companies they represent — were still grappling for answers on how to weather the current storm.

Newsday Publisher Tim Knight hinted the age of free Internet may be over. It’s a topic several newspaper publishers have openly discussed in recent months as papers continue to lose revenue to big search firms such as Google and niche products such as Career Builder.com and Cars.com. The struggling economy has only heightened the media industry’s troubles as fewer companies advertise.

“I have a family,” Knight said. “I have to find a way to make this work. This is hand-to-hand combat for every advertising dollar. It’s being really smart about what news you put out there. It is a much more challenging business.”

Ad dollars aside, several panelists concluded the current media model may well be broken, a sentiment echoed by Long Island Press publisher Jed Morey. “Our thing is broken and people don’t want to pay for it anymore and we have to figure that out.”

While Newsday isn’t going away any time soon, not every business will survive. The free weekly Long Island Press comes to mind. It’s a sobering thought for anyone in the media business. Check out the Press Club of Long Island for more on this topic.

Blog originally posted at LI Entrepreneurs.com

LI Pulse: Hofstra Softball

Title: Hofstra Softball
Publication: Long Island Pulse magazine
Author: Jason Molinet
Date: February 2009
Start Page: 54
Word Count: 910
 
It begins with alarm clocks blaring at 5 a.m. While the rest of Hofstra University remains sequestered in sleep, a small group of dedicated young women trek down to the locker room and then practice bubble that was once home to the New York Jets.

The Hempstead campus has yet to stir as Casey Fee and her softball teammates get their heart beats racing while pushing through endurance sprints on the field turf. There are weight training sessions too. All done before the first class of the day.

“It’s so cliché, but we work our asses off,’’ said Fee, a senior second baseman and former Long Beach standout.

Olivia Galati sat in on a few of the sweat-drenched sessions and knew this place was special – once she got past the initial shock. The St. John the Baptist senior is one of the best high school pitchers Long Island has produced in the last two decades.

So landing her would be a real coup. But how many teenagers eagerly sign up for such self-inflicted punishment?

 “Athletes on campus, we all know each other and they have respect for us,’’ senior pitcher Kayleigh Lotti said. “They see us train. They hear stories about how hard we work. But regular students? Not a lot of people know how good we are.’’

This is Hofstra softball. Bill Edwards enters his 20th season at the helm of the preeminent college program on Long Island — and University of Connecticut women’s basketball aside — perhaps the most consistent wins factory in the Northeast. It certainly holds claim to another distinction: the best team you’ve never heard of.

Consider what the Pride did last spring. Hofstra won a school-record 45 games and set an NCAA softball record by capturing the program’s 11th straight conference championship.

All that success is winning over fans. Galati signed a letter of intent with Hofstra in November. She represents an even brighter future. “They win the conference every year. I had a gut feeling I belong at Hofstra,’’ Galati said. “My goal — we — want to make it to the College World Series. We’re going to shoot for that.’’

It wasn’t always this way. Hofstra softball has a checkered past, and a history going back to 1951.

Karen Andreone, the athletic director at Our Lady of Mercy Academy in Syosset, remembers her stint at Hofstra well. Her team beat then-powerhouse Adelphi and won a New York state softball title in 1979. After an assistant coach was downsized and scholarship money siphoned off, according to Andreone, she left following the 1980 season and the program endured a mostly-lost decade.

“After I left, my former players called me crying,’’ said Andreone, who went 36-24 as Hofstra coach from 1978-80. “The program was so awful.’’

Andreone’s departure coincided with growing pains on campus. But the University not only recovered, today it thrives as one of the top private institutions in the Northeast.

Softball bounced back too — eventually. The program went 16-22 in 1989, the year before Edwards jumped from Commack High School to the college game. What he stepped into was a mess. But school administrators were committed and backed Edwards the entire way.

“When I took over, there was an old pitching machine, a bucket of balls and a few bats,’’ Edwards said. “I had one-and-a-half scholarships. And that’s it. It was ridiculous.’’

While Edwards had no prior college experience, he transformed Hofstra softball as the sport grew nationally. College softball is still dominated by the West Coast powers. An Arizona or California school has won 22 of the last 25 NCAA Division I national championships.

Times are changing. Louisiana-Lafayette reached the College World Series last season, becoming the first small-conference program to crash the party. Hofstra could be the next.

“It is one of the fastest growing sports around the country,’’ Edwards said. “There’s soccer. And softball is right behind it. Kids are turning out for softball. Summer leagues are exploding. Back in the day, there were two summer teams on Long Island. Today there are 75.’’

A broader talent pool helps. But everyone, from Edwards on down, points to conditioning and coaching as the key to the Pride’s rise from mid-major conference contenders to players on the national stage.

“We teach the fundamentals and then discipline those fundamentals,’’ Edwards said. He’s is so highly regarded that Edwards flies around the country teaching courses for the National Fastpitch Coaches College.

Aside from pre-dawn workouts during the off-season, there’s practice each afternoon. The fundamentals of the game become second nature as a result. Situational awareness grows instinctive. And all the hard work creates an attitude that’s impossible to miss.

The Pride came just one win away from a berth in the College World Series in 2004 and hosted an NCAA Regional last spring. With the bulk of the team back, Hofstra opens the new season with its best opportunity yet. Its quest begins Feb. 13 in Tampa against Illinois. The home opener is March 26 against Rutgers (free admission).

Lotti, the two time Colonial Athletic Association pitcher of the year, is a hard-throwing windmiller in a sport where pitching dominates. Fee is one of three all-conference hitters returning. While each plays to their strengths, there’s a common denominator coursing through them.

It’s a fellowship only an athlete or a soldier could understand.

“We’re the scrappy players from the Northeast,’’ Fee said. “Teams know we’ll never give up. We’ve got that extra edge.’’

Watching My Nest Egg Crack

Good thing I’m only 35. I’ve got time to rebuild my retirement funds. When I left Newsday a year ago to pursue business interests, I did what nearly everyone leaving a corporate job today does with his 401K. I rolled it into an IRA.

I was tempted to take a good chunk out, pay the penalty and use it to help bankroll my venture. But I didn’t. As it turns out, I was even more dumb. Sensing my youth and bullish outlook on tech, I placed all into Yahoo. I can hear the groans already. I’m rolling my eyes as I write this.

Needless to say, my investment tanked my more than half.

So after a train-wreck September, October and November, I finally cashed out of Yahoo and kept the assets in a money-market fund. Until the beginning of the new year. I sensed the new administration might signal the start of a turn around.

I went all in once again. This time I spead my IRA over many stocks, including high-yields Bank of America and Citigroup. (I thought the worst was over, what can I say?)

Anyway, you know what happened next. My nest egg has been scrambled — or poached!

I’m assuming there are plenty more like me out there. So if you are reading this, I feel your pain.

I’m holding on to those stocks. Let it ride. I’m in it for the long haul. At least now I have no choice. It takes the most volatile aspect of this all out of the decision-making process. That would be me.

Blog originally posted at LI Entrepreneurs.com

The Problem With Social Networks

I’m a big fan of social networks. I’ve even developed Facebook apps and used Twitter to deliver news. The Internet has made the ability to communicate over multiple platforms an exciting time for grass roots journalism.

But for big media companies, this is not good. It’s judgement day.

In case no one has noticed the sky is falling! Classifieds are gone and the current economic climate has forced everyone to reevaluate how they spend ad dollars. Seriously bad news for newspapers — headline in 80-point helvetica bold. The free flow of information on the web has served one purpose in the case of newspapers — to steal a product that costs money and manpower to create.

How do you right this imbalance? My suggestion is to turn the clock back to 1995 and start charging for access.

Media organizations need to own their content and develop their own audience — independent of the Facebooks of the world. And lock down their content.

By the way, in my opinion, another problem with chasing these social networks? It puts more and more burden on reporters to update blogs, Twitter, etc. It takes time away from going out and reporting a story or working the phones. Oh, and don’t forget to post a web-only story ASAP and then edit video you shot while writing the story for the daily paper. Even Matt Drudge would choke on all that…

Blog originally posted at Wired Journalists

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