http://blogmaverick.com/2011/04/04/whats-the-role-of-media-for-sports-teams/ What's the role of media for sports teams? Apr 4th 2011 7:46PM I’m going to make this short and sweet. In the year 2011, I’m not sure I have a need for beat writers from ESPN.com, Yahoo, or any website for that matter to ever be in our locker room before or after a game. I think we have finally reached a point where not only can we communicate any and all factual information from our players and team directly to our fans and customers as effectively as any big sports website, but I think we have also reached a point where our interests are no longer aligned. I think those websites have become the equivalent of paparazzi rather than reporters. Have you ever watched TMZ where they catch someone walking down the street and ask questions like “are you upset about your divorce ?” or “Who is better, Kobe or Babe Ruth”. You know the type of questions that make the recipient look at the person asking and either roll their eyes or wonder why that person is even there. Those are the type of questions asked in locker rooms today. They are asked not for some journalistic purpose, but as a traffic generating opportunity. Do we really need to ask Dwight Howard and Deron Williams where they think they will be going in TWO YEARS ? Do we need to ask players “are you upset about the loss ?” There is never a loss of words or lack of depth in questions asked in the locker room after a game. Which got me thinking. Why are they there ? This isnt 1983. This isnt 2000. In the year 2011,we are in a completely different media landscape. So let’s take inventory of the platforms in the locker room Newspaper: Newspaper has to be in the room. I know this is counter intuitive to some, but it is a fact. Why ? Because there is a wealthy segment of my customer base that does not and will not go online to find out information about the Mavs. If I don’t have a PRINT beat writer and /or PRINT columnist showing up and writing about the Mavs, both sides lose. So congrats Eddie, DP and friends. You are safe to dance another weekend. If you work for the local paper and only publish online…you could still be in the bottom two. TV: The same logic that applies to newspapers, applies to TV. They own a segment of the population that doesn’t always read the sports section, but will turn on the TV to catch up. It may be the local news broadcast for some. It may be ESPN. In any event, they get their news the old fashioned way, they find the remote. Unfortunately for the Mavs, we don’t always have someone from the local news or espn in the locker room with a camera. They pick and choose when they think they should be there to get original footage, or to just pull highlights or other shared footage and add some voice over. We like anything that gets us on TV to reach our fans for whom TV is their primary source of Mavs info. TV, you are safe to dance another week. Producers of internet video on TV network/station websites… Your fate is not yet known. You are not at the top of the food chain. Internet Reporters: Reporters whose primary job is to write for an internet site typically fall into two categories. Paid and unpaid. Unpaid writers typically do it as a labor of love and IMHO far exceed the influence and impact of their paid counterparts. Sure there are many who just rant and rave, but enough realize that if they work hard and provide support for their writing, they may just get noticed by a big website who will pay them to write . If you can back up what you say with well thought out and in depth analysis, you know the things that some people used to call journalism, you are welcome in the locker room The internet reporters who get paid , IMHO , are to the Mavs and any sports team, the least valuable of all media . I’m a firm believer that their interests are not only not aligned with sports teams like the Mavs, but in fact are diametrically opposed. They tend to look at the number of page views they get for any article as ‘their ratings”. More is better. Which in turn leads them to gear their work towards generating more pageviews. Now at this point traditional wisdom might say ” well if its about the Mavs and its generating pageviews, then it must be something that Mavs fans are interested in, so it must be a good thing. Its the equivalent of one of the dumbest sayings of all time “all press is good press”. All press is not good press for a sports team. Internet writers will tell you, transaction rumors generate the most traffic. From a sports team perspective, this is not good. Why ? Because internet writers have so little creativity and originality. Any idiot can start a rumor, at which point the writer says (and to be fair, its not just internet writers who ask, but its 99pct internet writers who publish), “I hate to ask this but the rumor is out there that you are being traded to the pismo beach panthers. Can you comment”. From that point until the trade deadline, the same question in some form is asked over and over and over again of everyone in the organization. The hope isn’t that someone will say “yes its true”. The hope is that it will elicit a comment that is headline worthy. “George Mikan said he would happily consider a trade to Pismo” And on it goes and goes and goes. The result is that the team is often negatively impacted. Players get distracted. Team personnel get distracted and spend too much time dealing with the rumors. Its a negative for any team. Of course rumors wont go away if a writer doesn’t have access, but we can reduce the stress of a player having a mike shoved in his face and asked the same question day after day. We also don’t have to legitimize the writer by giving them access to the locker room. We are better served making them the equivalent of the random “Maryslittlesportsblog.com” written by a 13 year old. Right behind trades ? Negative Headline Trolls. . Talking to the Mavs internet writers, you would think we were out of the playoff race and had lost 60 or more games. Every loss is a catastrophe of epic proportions. It is as if every other team in the league is winning every game. Only the Mavs lose games. Again, we can’t stop anyone from writing what they want. Nor do we expect every article to be positive. If you want to disagree 100pct of the time and you back it up with facts. More power to you. But instead we get the equivalent of “Because I said so” as the depth of analysis. As one writer told me, his opinion counts for more because he is informed And he considers himself informed because he has access to the organization. I can fix that.. I’m not saying that all questions and columns are bad. But it is much, much harder to find the good. It is rare for me to encounter an article/post on one of the sites and think to myself ” that is really good for us”. And that is from a franchise that has won 50 or more games for more than a decade. I can’t imagine how other teams feel. So why do we let them in the door ? What value do they serve to the Mavs ? Its not like they are journalists. They are Fox News/MSNBC for sports. They may be popular, for now, but whatever benefit they served 4 or more years ago seems to have quickly disappeared. Unlike TV and Newspaper, I have access to reach their online audience. Not only do I have access, but so does each of my players through their own twitter and facebook accounts. Why not just use twitter, Facebook fan pages, Mavs.com and or our own media platforms to communicate with online Mavs customers and fans ? How many customers and prospects could we possibly be missing by losing internet writers ? And could we just spend money to reach whatever of their audience we don’t currently cover ? By competing with them as an information source, can we pre empt their negativity with information that does a better job of selling the Mavs ? By leaving them out of the locker room and organization, do we reduce their ability to have a negative impact on players ? The last few years have brought about a lot of change in how people publish and receive information . It might just be time to change how teams communicate as well What do you think ?
Yes. Blazersedge.com and brightsideofthesun.com both have reps with media access that allows them to go to games, visit locker rooms, and practices.
Sounds like he's pissed at some negative comments made about recent struggles of the Mavs. What I don't get is why the distinction between unpaid and paid internet writers. It seems many of the unpaid sites are saying the same things as the paid sites and both types can be motivated by page views. Cuban said unpaid writers want to be noticed and possibly land a paid gig, but isn't getting lots of traffice to your site one way of getting notice?
I thought he said he was going to keep it short and sweet. I can understand him blocking access to internet writers, but he won't stop them from writing. Facebook and Twitter access to players is great primary source material for fans where they don't need to rely on a writer to hear what the players are saying. But, for secondary-source writing (analysis on what's going on), internet readers are not going to trust the official Mavs organ for news. Instead, people will continue to go to independent writers; if they lose locker-room access, they'll just have somewhat less information to write from.
That's what I thought too. Cuban, of all people, should understand the internet culture. He can't stop people from writing things. He should just treat them nice and hope they don't bash him like he bashes them.
Unfortunately, in today's media world, fact-checking is very low on the list of priorities. Establishments like the Houston Chronicle relish the fact that they hire professional trolls such as Jerome Solomon, and Richard Justice to sit there and antagonize the fanbase of their local teams instead of just reporting the facts. I enjoy editorials and opinion-based articles to an extent, but when there is zero accountability for the drivel that is put out, it just makes the whole thing sickening. I agree with Cuban that the motives for a lot of media outlets is purely to garner hits, but I just think that it's the world we live in.
i know where exactly this came from. A beat writer that works for espndallas tweeted along the lines "jason terry just shut up" and linked it to a site where terry was talking about matt barnes. Then cuban tweeted him back and said "follow your own advice."
I have to agree with them. I remember a few years ago how annoyed he was after the kidd for harris trade and harris was dropping 25 or something along those lines and all the writers say it was the worst trade and history and mavs could've had another 25 ppg scorer and then paul ripped up kidd as well and they said that is why the trade was bad and kidd can't play d any more. Needless to say, kidd almost averaged a triple double again next year and kept up his role, and it was a fact that devin harris would score under 15ppg no matter what since he wouldnt get touches or the green light he did in nj, and of course Paul averaged teh same or better stats against harris bc the D wasn't the issue with harris or kidd, it was that paul was that good. I think they are just so baseless and go with emotions that I don't get why they get credited as experts when they are closer to you and I, especially espn
Please lets not give this attention slut what it desires .. He's so insecure although some of what he say is true its just directed at the wrong direction
tl;dr Kidding. I actually agree with him here. I used to hate Mark Cuban but lately he's kinda grown on me. Not that he isn't a douche, I just don't hate him anymore...I think.
We should feel sorry for the Internet reporters. For having to cover the Mavericks in the first place. He should be lucky anyone would want to cover that team. Bunch of p**sies who once again will either get knocked out in the 1st round by the Blazers or be embarrassed by (INSERT NAME OF TEAM HERE). I used to be a big fan of Dirk, and I still acknowledge he is one of the best-shooting big men of all time, but boy is he a wuss when it counts. The Lakers game was downright embarrassing and par for the course for this team who will never win a championship in their current configuration. SWISH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I know Clutch isn't an internet writer per se, but doesn't he get access to the behind the scenes of the NBA?
I absolutely hate Mark Cuban but he does bring up a very good point. I HATE those worthless bastards that work at TMZ, all they do is ruin people's lives. Seriously get a damn life and leave other people alone and let them live their lives.
The media relationship is a two way street. If you want the coverage and attention and the spotlight, you have to deal with the boneheads looking to conjure up controversy and drama and a story out of nothing. Reporters look out for themselves first, that is an accepted fact, especially the ones whose salary is dependent on "traffic", unlike most TV and print journalists who have a steady job. So yeah, I get what Cuban is saying, but it seems like a "duh" commentary. If you want to lock some reporters out, go for it, but be prepared for the backlash of coming off like a thin-skinned jerk (something we all already know Cuban is). It's good for the common sports fan to have a mix of people covering their teams, from embedded journalists who are super close with the team (sometimes to a fault *cough*johnmcclain*cough*), to outsiders who are struggling to find that big juicy story. If Cuban wants to close ranks, go ahead, it's his right to do so. But do so at your own peril. The media giveth, and the media taketh away...
There are times that Cuban drives me crazy with his ideas/perspectives, but this isn't one of them. Which site do you feel gives you better information... Clutchfans or HoopsHype? One of those two internet sites pays their writers... the other doesn't. The unpaid internet bloggers do it because they love the team... if they break a story its because they care what happens, not because they are trying to get more hits to satisfy their agreement with the site. There are of course exceptions to that rule... TrueHoop is paid by ESPN now, but still creates quality stuff. Hollinger the same way. They didn't start out that way, but kept their love of the game above the need to be paid to do it. But for single team coverage, I still go with the unpaids on most everything I read.
So he's saying that he needs the print guys for his "wealthy" patrons, and that his players' performances might be affected by negative media. Translation: It is all about profits, and my players are boys, not men.
It's like everything the guy does in business works and everything he does with his team backfires. He goes on a crusade against officiating (of course, only the calls against his team, let's not pretend he really wants equal officiating for all) and it does nothing for his team, probably actually hurt them in 2006. He threatens to sue Don Nelson or whatever it was for revealing secrets- seriously? And he becomes a laughing stock over that. He runs the bus over Avery Johnson several times, protects players like Terry when he really needs to be the one telling them to shut up, and takes every little slight against his team like some gigantic firestorm. He is just...he is a boy operating in a man's world, that's the best analogy I can think of. The proverbial spoiled, petulant child who can certainly get some of the things that he wants, but not everything (rings, anyone?). I mean, do you ever feel when you're reading his blogs and comments that he's still like this kid in high school? The words Petty, Petty, and Petty keep coming up in my head. Sort of like Phil Jackson, but at least Phil comes across as somewhat mature and intelligent. Plus, although he ticks me off with his backhanded compliments about the Rockets and other things, Phil is a basketball guy with championships as a player and coach. His opinion on things basketball-related hold weight to me. Cuban always seems like he's the guy jumping up and down outside the circle of players, coaches, and all true basketball people screeching, "Can I get in?" Please, please, please!!!"
