There has been a bit of a stink over Mark Cuban’s decision to ban bloggers from the Dallas Mavericks locker room. His explanation is here, and it’s completely reasonable; I don’t disagree at all with his perspective. What interested me most, however, was this comment:

Our interview room is open to bloggers. We take interview requests from bloggers. I’m a fan of getting as much coverage as possible for the Mavs. What I’m not a fan of is major media companies throwing their weight around thinking they should be treated differently.

I’m impressed that an NBA organization permits bloggers into the interview room after games. That’s a remarkably progressive attitude toward “new media;” I’m not sure if any other NBA teams have a similar policy; in the NHL, the Washington Capitals and Carolina Hurricanes, at least, are open to the idea. The New York Islanders, as well, have been very receptive, opening a “Blog Box” for Islander bloggers:

Chris Botta, vice president of media relations for the Islanders: “What we determined is the blogosphere can no longer be ignored. We believe it is a significant new avenue to grow the popularity not just of the Islanders, but of the game of hockey.”

Here at Redleg Nation, we’ve discussed Major League Baseball’s disdain for blogs, and the Reds have expressly denied press credentials for Redleg Nation in the past. (Frankly, that’s not such a big deal to us; what we do here doesn’t depend on getting access. We tried to get credentialed to attend owner Bob Castellini’s first press conference, just to see what the response would be from the Reds.) The Dayton Dragons, on the other hand, one of Cincinnati’s Class A affiliates, has been very willing to grant press passes to RN on several occasions, including this game.

Certainly folks in the mainstream media largely have little affection for blogs (if you don’t believe me, read this, where the Philadelphia Daily News’ Bill Conlin said this: “The only positive thing I can think of about Hitler’s time on earth–I’m sure he would have eliminated all bloggers.”). I don’t know where all this is going, but I’m glad to see movement in the right direction in other professional sports (heck, even the White House has credentialed a blogger).

At some point, citizen media is going to become too influential for MLB to ignore it any longer. Why can’t MLB, or individual teams, develop some guidelines for issuing press credentials to bloggers like these that were developed by the Washington Capitals? I don’t think any of those guidelines are unreasonable in any way.

Now, all that said, I’m not particularly interested in gaining press credentials for myself or for Redleg Nation. Again, we don’t need credentials to do what we do here (although it would help, in limited instances, to expand our coverage of the Reds). I am, however, interested in seeing where this whole debate goes. It’s time for MLB to recognize the trend and hop on board.

Since I plan on going to Opening Day anyway, perhaps I will request credentials for that game, just to see how quickly I’m denied. Either way, what are your thoughts on this subject?

Chad,
I think that the Mavericks have it right. Bloggers for the interview room seems like a great way to get them in and do what they intend to do. They can ask questions of players there. I don’t think its much of an issue that they don’t gain access to the locker room. To be honest, while there are some real good bloggers out there, they aren’t likely held to the same standards as actual members of the traditional media. One yahoo getting the wrong access could really mess things up in a locker room situation. Maybe something that could be worked out is after so long of being a credentialed blogger (say a year) one could earn the right to get access to the locker room or something similar to that.

It seems that the minor leagues in general do seem to be much more generous to granting access to the players and teams. I have a friend who does a prospect website that is growing quite a bit right now and the last two years he has been granted press passes for both the AFL and Futures Games without anything more than a request. The Dragons are one of the more fan friendly teams on the planet and have been very willing to help out. In the past, I have had a very good working relationship with the Louisville Bats as well. This year, I haven’t talked with anyone though since their Media Relations Director from the past several years took another job.

MLB is the least tech savvy billion dollar company in existence probably. They will eventually join in and allow Bloggers access, but if its in the next 5 years, I would be incredibly surprised.

Comment by doug — 3/13/2008 @ 1:32 pm

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Here’s the thing about Cuban: His ban on bloggers is a (unfortunately more and more typical from him) petty response to a story he didn’t like. The “blogger” whose (perfectly legitimate) actions led to this ban, works for the Dallas Morning News. It’s not the “some nut in his pajamas” that comes to mind.

Comment by Chris — 3/13/2008 @ 2:03 pm

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Perhaps, blogging can be treated like making the cut for the PGA Tour. The issues seem to come down to numbers and weeding out the riffraff. Some means of rating the blogs for their contribution and seriousness, whether by the general public or the organization, could be given annually and the top x bloggers get credentials. You could possibly have tiers like the PGA had the Nationwide tour and another “junior” professional tour for the class of golfer that didn’t make the PGA cut. Locker Room/Interview Room/Phone/Mailing List/Banishment could be an example way of distinguishing them.

Comment by McWax — 3/13/2008 @ 2:23 pm

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I just read Cuban’s post, which I hadn’t seen when this story broke earlier in the week. What he actually writes is perfectly logical, and to a degree, I agree (as McWax says, it’s not impossible to sort out “legitimate” bloggers into the rest.

I also don’t buy for a minute that this decision wasn’t directed at the DMN guy. Cuban just “happened” to learn that he was a blogger, and banned the only blogger who’d been credentialed right after McMahon wrote a somewhat-controversial story, yet Cuban never read that story? Please.

I find his bigger points about newspaper bloggers quite interesting. I had a limited debate with Trent Rosecrans about this last year, when he expressed the opinion that he was subject to different standards (of objectivity, of formalism, of newsworthiness) on his blog than in the paper. (Specifically, I think the debate was over whether it was appropriate for Trent to criticize Brandon Phillips in the blog (pretty mildly) for being difficult with Trent, when he admittedly wouldn’t do the same in the daily paper.) I think Cuban is saying that there are different standards, but that in following them, the blogging newspaper repoters somehow debase themselves.

Comment by Chris — 3/13/2008 @ 2:40 pm

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Maybe its because Trent works for 1530 now, but recently he was getting on Brandon Phillips pretty hard for his jealousy of other players getting attention.

Comment by doug — 3/13/2008 @ 11:19 pm

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