March
18
Cuban Puts His Foot on Blogging
I have long enjoyed reading Mark Cuban's insights on new media, technology and the internet, mostly, on his blog. But he makes a strange argument about blogs here. He seems to be saying that blogs are tarred and tainted by all the regular folks (like him?) who blog, while any self-respecting big media outlet with journalistic cred would be foolish to sign onto the blog trend--unless they call their "blogs" something else.
Is he embarrassed to be a member of the club he belongs to?
Is he saying good blogging and good journalism cannot coexist?
It appears that he is twisting himself into a pretzel over his decision to ban bloggers from the Dallas Mavericks locker room. Hmmm.
Blogging is a technology, a fast and simple self-publishing platform. As you can see from the fascinating range of responses to Cuban's post, there are plenty of examples of decent journalistically-sound big media bloggers, at the NYT and elsewhere. If anything, they are helping to give blogging a good name. Anyone can use the platform, at home, or at work, as an amateur or a professional. And we all get to pick the blogs we want to read regularly. Some of the ones I read are by at-home bloggers who do better work than the media professionals. And there are also pros--with unusual access to the beats they cover-- who post stuff that non-pros can't.
For old media, blogs are an online marketing tool, a road to the future. They spread media content to a wider not-necessarily local readership. And they are interactive community-builders.
Subscribe to this blog's feed
What I find more interesting than how blogs are evolving is how the response to blogs is evolving. More and more (Mark Cuban, the Olympic Committee) the response to blogs has been to block or control them. Mark Cuban is somewhat unique in that he's honest about why he's banning bloggers from the locker room. Blogging is not worse or better than traditional journalism, just different in much the same way that a Hunter Thompson novel is very different from one by Charles Dickens. It's still the content that makes it worth reading or ignoring.
Posted by: mitkid | March 18, 2008 at 04:29 AM
Big ego. Thin skin.
Posted by: Christian Toto | March 18, 2008 at 11:44 AM
Don't we all just take ourselves too seriously at times? Our opinions, regardless of our intellect, know-how, fame or lack thereof, are nothing more than our opinions. Does anyone outside of Mark's blog and commercial circle of friends/associates really give a rip what he thinks, or his analysis, of blogs, blogging, or bloggers?
Posted by: Nicole | March 18, 2008 at 02:01 PM
Personally, I think that blogging is the new journalism and can without a doubt coexist with one another. The great thing about blogging is that anyone can do it, whether you are some regular guy trying to make some money or you are a national/global corporation looking to spread the word, it just works. I find more and more people turning to blogs for their daily news and stories.
Posted by: MattG | March 18, 2008 at 04:26 PM
What a surname! What a bore!
Posted by: Daniel Camino | March 20, 2008 at 09:36 PM