Blog Long And Prosper

According to Blogger.com, this will be my 200th post since the blog went online in July of 2005. Coincidentally (and unintentionally), the topic is, well, blogs.

I recently received an column by Kevin Sherrington of the Dallas Morning News entitled "Let's Embrace The Age Of Now." The piece was a response to Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and his clubhouse ban on bloggers, who are no longer being granted Mavs media credentials for reasons that Cuban explains at length, ironically enough, on his personal blog (BlogMaverick.com).

To summarize, Cuban argues that a blog is a blog is a blog, no matter who employs the writer, and no matter where the entries appear. If he allows one Dallas Morning News blogger access to the Mavs' locker room, he must grant all bloggers the same respect - even the ones who write for free from their basement. Fearing a slippery slope of dozens of average Joes applying for press passes, Cuban decided on a blanket policy of "no bloggers."

(On that note - what if, back in the early '90s, major market radio stations, college teams, the NBA, and the NFL had told the young founders of AudioNet to take a hike? You know, it was a silly Internet-based thing. Not "traditional" media at all. What if those properties had never allowed AudioNet to carry their broadcasts online? We would never have heard of Broadcast.com, as it was later called, and we might never have heard of Mark Cuban, who became a billionaire when Broadcast.com went public and was eventually sold to Yahoo for $5.7 billion. Good thing for Cuban that nobody had any blanket policies back then.)

Had Cuban stopped at the ban, this would be a much smaller story. But he didn't stop. Instead, he devotes hundreds of words at BlogMaverick.com to his contention that newspapers are making a seismic marketing and branding blunder by adding blogs to their Internet sites. You can read the posts yourself if you like, but essentially, Cuban is lecturing newspapers on how they should be running their businesses. His points are valid, by the way. An abuse of power by leveraging his role as an NBA franchise owner to make those points? Probably. But valid nonetheless.

Cuban argues that newspapers must differentiate their Internet content from the basement blog of an average, non-credentialed Joe; Kevin Sherrington counters that the only way to pull that off is to have the behind-the-scenes access routinely granted to members of the traditional media. Whether Mark Cuban likes it or not, Sherrington writes, the desperate focus on Internet content by major newspapers is a fact of life, something that's unlikely to change. As he puts it, "if we're going to continue to evolve, we have to blog." The newspaper business is not good, in case anyone hadn't noticed. Writers across all disciplines are in a desperate fight to save their jobs, and if management says "blog," it shall be blogged. Cuban considers this a mistake; Sherrington, and dozens of other sportswriters like him, just wants to remain employed, minus the marketing lecture.

As one who straddles the line between "traditional media" (Sun Sports & FSN Florida) and "new media" (this here blog thingy), I'm siding with Kevin Sherrington on this one. Not that I think Cuban is necessarily wrong in his conclusions about newspaper bloggers; rather, Cuban's too late. That horse has long since left the barn.

Every major newspaper in Florida, and many more across the country, now includes enhanced web content as part of its coverage. Whether Mark Cuban agrees with this business decision is irrelevant; what's done is done. Readers, and sports fans in particular, have come to expect web content from established writers like Ira Winderman of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Brian Schmitz of the Orlando Sentinel, Greg Cote of the Miami Herald, and dozens more. It's already out there, a result of declining circulations and sagging profits in the daily newspaper business. These papers are trying to stay with the curve; you can call their web contributions a "blog," call it "RealTime reporting" (as Cuban suggests), call it what you will. Banning bloggers from the clubhouse, as Cuban has done, will do nothing to stop newspapers from exploring every avenue of the Internet in an attempt to salvage their business.

And that's another point - why is it so hard to distinguish an independent blogger from one who works for a legitimate media outlet? If some guy in Ft. Worth calls the Mavs and says he's got a kickin' sports blog that he updates in between shifts at Best Buy, I have no problem with the Mavs denying him a credential. If, however, said blogger draws a paycheck from the Dallas Morning News or the Austin American-Statesman or Yahoo or CBS Sportsline, the only difference between that writer and a print guy is the medium. The answer is, it's not a tough distinction at all.

I performed a highly unscientific survey of a few of Sun Sports & FSN Florida's professional team partners - the Miami Heat, Tampa Bay Lightning, and Orlando Magic. Media relations officials from all three teams told me essentially the same thing: as long as a blogger represents an established media outlet, be it a newspaper, TV station or network, or a website like Yahoo or ESPN.com, there is no policy against credentialing those writers. All three teams used some version of the phrase "case-by-case basis." In other words, no blanket policy required. Take a little time, ask a couple of questions, and then use your professional judgement to determine whether or not a credential request is legit. It's not that hard, and it's part of the job in media relations.

So why does Mark Cuban decide to flatly deny bloggers, even those who work for legitimate media outlets? It seems we are to be educated, even if we never asked for the lesson.

What he's doing with the ban, and reinforces on his own blog (has the irony of that sunk in yet?), is lecturing newspaper management and the unwitting general public on his business theories. He's using his ownership of the Mavericks as an avenue to make his point, which he is free to do, although I disagree with it. Put simply, if Mark Cuban didn't own the Mavs, would anyone care what he thought about newspaper writers as bloggers? But he does own the Mavs, and therefore it is a story - a story that will apparently not be written by anyone in Dallas who admits to being a "blogger."

At some point, the NBA - which has shamelessly promoted Gilbert Arenas' blog and the league's own enormous pile of web content at NBA.com - will have to address the issue of bloggers as it pertains to credentials. For that matter, I would imagine that similar stories have popped up with other franchises in other leagues, as local bloggers and media outlets compete for precious space in the press box. The difference, of course, is that no other owner in any other league has chosen to blog about the fact that he's banning bloggers. So now we know Mark Cuban's opinion on the matter. We didn't ask for it, but we got it.

And every day, more and more print coverage of sports will move towards the Internet, whether it's at a newspaper's site or not. This is where it's going, and there's no catching that horse.