If you follow the NBA, you may be aware that Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, recently banned fulltime bloggers from the team’s locker room.
Cuban claims it is for reasons of crowding in the locker room and the fact that anyone with a blog could try to get in claiming to be a reporter. This from a guy who makes profuse use of his own blog.
The Society of Professional Jounalists are protesting the ban, in part because the ban actually seems to be targeted at Tim MacMahon, a blogger who works for the Dallas Morning News. MacMahon, in addition to his blogging duties, also gets quotes from players for use by Morning News beat writers.
This move confuses me. Not only because Cuban himself is an ardent blogger but because he once famously claimed that any publicity is good publicity when commenting on rape allegations against Kobe Bryant.
And it seems that the move is in retaliation for something McMahon wrote on his blog, more than anything else.
But maybe the confusion is all part of Cuban’s plan. After all, he’s getting plenty of publicity out of this incident. Cuban is a sharp businessman and marketer, so maybe this is just another means of generating publicity, be it good or bad.
Filed under: Blogging, New Media | Tagged: Dallas Mavericks, Dallas Morning News, Mark Cuban, Society of Professional Journalists, Tim MacMahon
