Our weekly series on cool media folks - Meet Matthew Ondesko

One thing about sitting in the pressbox at Sabres games is you don't get to choose the company you keep. Assigned seating chart means the Sabres staff gets to pick your neighbors, not you.

For Artvoice, that means Sports and Leisure Magazine on the left, Metro Source on the right. And most of the time, we'll find Matthew Ondesko in the Metro Source chair.

Matthew is the Associate Editor for Metro Source, which is sort of a combination of your local pennysaver and a mix of localized editorial content. The weekly paper is delivered to every doorknob in WNY. Matthew is in charge of sports, and his paper has found a big niche in covering local high school sports.

With strong South Buffalo roots (Bishop Timon HS grad), Matthew has big goals... he talks of being his own publisher some day. With ease he will rattle off and examine "new media" business models and talk about the future of journalism and the delivery of news. He looks upward towards larger media outlets and asks "why not me?". But of all his current media assignments, clearly he relishes most his coverage of Sabres hockey and participation in the Sabres media corps, once saying "my friends see me up here and they are so envious and say I'm so lucky to be able to do this. Yeah I am lucky."

While we have known Matthew since we started covering the Sabres, it is this season that he has rocketed onto our media "A" list. He is a valued colleague, a good friend... and oh... Matthew likes sports travel as well, so don't be surprised if you hear of him again here, coming along on a future USRT adventure.