I would like to thank everyone for their initial interest in and hopefully their continued support of the NOVA Baseball Magazine.
The magazine started as a pipe dream of mine years ago, and in the past few months that dream traveled a journey that has culminated in today’s reality. Countless hours at the expense of my time with family and friends have been put into getting the magazine off the ground. Thank you to everyone in my life who has helped me along the way, and provided suport and advice. This would not have been possible without you.
A special thanks to my brother, Jon Kamide, who designed the logo that you see on our header and will be splashed all over our various outlets and social media pages. The logo captures perfectly the vision I have for the magazine - to focus simply on the coverage of baseball in Northern Virginia - and the basic color scheme represents how I have always looked at and approached life, in black and white.
This venture will combine my two passions - sports media and baseball - and I’m hoping will serve as a great tool for raising the profile of our game in the area and increasing the media exposure for our local teams and players.
Today’s web site launch is just the first entity of a multi-platformed media outlet that will also include a weekly e-notebook and digital magazine and annual preseason and postseason high school media guides for over 60 schools in the counties of Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William, and the cities of Alexandria, Falls Church, Leesburg and Manassas.
Between the four outlets, readers will be able to follow local youth, travel, high school and collegiate baseball through feature stories, editorials, player and coach columns, news & notes, game summaries, standings and scores.
Through the end of February, all content on the web site will be free to all readers. Then, at the outset of March, all of our premium content will require a $29.99 annual subscription, which will include a login for the site, the e-notebook sent to your email inbox each Friday, access to the digital magazine, and mailed copies of the media guides. I have done my best to keep the subscription costs as absolutely low as possible to attract as many folks in the baseball community to sign up while also covering costs associated with the media outlets and providing nominal compensatation for the time I will be putting into this, as well as that of others who will become involved moving forward.
All standings, scores, and our “Around the Diamond” news and notes section - which includes a Player of the Week chosen from nominations by our readers, and a High School Top 10 Poll that is chosen by our selection committee, will remain free to all readers.
As we get things started with the magazine, I will be creating an internship program, with each editorial intern taking responsibility for one high school conference, updating that league’s standings, scores and game summaries on a daily basis throughout the spring season, and potentially taking on other opportunities such as writing feature stories. This will be a fantastic opportunity for a young student with aspirations of becoming involved in the field.
Eventually, I would like to expand the magazine to also include a ‘NOVA Baseball Weekly’ webcast, and perhaps a ‘Game of the Week’ web broadcast. But, as the saying goes, let’s walk before we run. The meantime will be spent developing a solid content base as I strive to make NOVA Baseball Magazine “your source for baseball news in Northern Virginia”.
Please help to spread the word as I look to grow this venture. Pass our site along to your friends and family in the baseball community, post links to the site and stories on your social media pages, and inform local businesses and other potential advertisers of an opportunity to reach thousands in the baseball commuity!
Thank you all once again for your support, and especially thank you to my family and friends for your support and patience throughout this process.
Joey Kamide, Editor & Publisher,
jkamide@novabaseballmagazine.com
