http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcon...mavs/stories/032808dnspomavsblog.3623e01.html NBA tells Dallas Mavericks to allow locker room access to bloggers 10:00 PM CDT on Thursday, March 27, 2008 By BARRY HORN / The Dallas Morning News bhorn@dallasnews.com The NBA has instructed the Mavericks to re-open the team's home locker room to properly credentialed full-time bloggers who were banned earlier this month. Bloggers, including The Dallas Morning News' Tim MacMahon, again will be allowed locker room access when the team returns to American Airlines Center for Wednesday's game against the Golden State Warriors. MacMahon, who primarily blogs for The News' Web site dallasnews.com, was barred earlier this month. Bloggers from ESPN.com's TrueHoop and the Los Angeles Times also have been turned away. The visitors' locker room at AAC has remained open to all credentialed media. "It's a new media age, and there are more ways for people to get information than ever before," said Brian McIntyre, the NBA's senior vice president for basketball communications. "That creates a lot of challenges for all of us who deal with the media, but we will deal with it." Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who contended the team's locker room was not large enough to accommodate all bloggers, accepted the league's edict but added a caveat. Via e-mail, Cuban said the Mavericks will open their locker room to all credentialed bloggers, regardless of affiliation. Mavericks credentials are issued by the team. Cuban indicated he believes bloggers should be treated equally, regardless of affiliation. "Which means we will encourage all bloggers to apply, whether they be someone on blogspot who has been posting for a couple weeks, kids blogging for their middle school Web site or those that work for big companies," wrote Cuban, a blogger himself. "We won't discriminate at all." He then cautioned that locker room time, which translates to access to players, may be divided. "We will try to work it out so that all bloggers come in as a group after credentialed media," Cuban wrote. "This will help us manage the crowds should there be quite a few bloggers." Cuban's position was challenged by Mike Fannin, president of the Associated Press Sports Editors. "With all due respect for the potential journalism talent in the middle school ranks, this rebuttal smacks with the tartness of sour grapes," Fannin, managing editor for sports and features at the Kansas City Star wrote in an e-mail. "Is this really the standard the NBA wants to set for blogging? "We're not asking the Mavericks or Mark Cuban to discriminate," added Fannin, who earlier in his career worked at The News. "We're simply seeking a common-sense distinction between someone who blogs professionally as part of an accredited media's beat coverage and someone who buys a ticket to the game." The Mavericks instituted their no-bloggers policy earlier this month, several days after Cuban asked MacMahon to leave the locker room when the team hosted the Sacramento Kings on Feb. 29. The policy stated that the team does "not have enough room in the locker room, nor enough media passes to fairly accommodate everyone." Bob Yates, deputy managing editor/sports of The News, immediately protested, saying the policy violated the language on the team-issued media passes and was "a veiled attempt at retribution" against MacMahon for an item critical of Mavericks coach Avery Johnson. Cuban denied the accusation, saying he did not read MacMahon's work. Robert W. Mong Jr., editor of The News, also via e-mail, wrote that Mavericks fans are the winners thanks to the NBA's decision. "Tim is back where he belongs (and should have been all along) – covering the Mavs and blogging for our readers," Mong wrote. Gilbert Bailon, president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, also applauded the NBA's decision. "They made the right call, said Bailon, editorial page editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and a former executive editor of The News and publisher of Al Dia, the Spanish-language sister newspaper to The News. "But this issue will come up again and again at all kinds of sporting events."
i actually side with cuban here. if the nba is going to require them to let bloggers for newspapers in, why not bloggers from anywhere. a lot of sports journalists just suck judging from the quality of articles they churn out on the aggregate, so it'd be funny to see them go in to the locker room and find themselves on equal footing with a 7th grader. we all know how stupid so-called 'credentialed' journalists can be anyway. i'd wish the nba would just let teams manage their own locker rooms, this face time requirement must be incredibly annoying.
He said that bloggers would enter as a group, after the credentialed media. If a blogger happens to have a job with a credentialed media, wouldn't he be part of the former group anyways?
