The article in today's NY Times, "Tension Over Sports Blogging" discusses many of the issues surrounding blogging and professional sports. Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, sought to ban bloggers from the Mavericks’ locker room, but the National Basketball Association intervened, ruling that bloggers from credentialed news organizations must be admitted.
As blogging is the new form of reporting and today, seems to be the way in which many people gain and discuss information; it then seems that it would be impossible to ban this form of reporting from the popular world of sports. However, Cuban decided to prove a point by allowing ANYONE and EVERYONE who has a sports blog to come into the locker room; “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.”
The main issue between the press and organized sports is who covers the teams, how reporters cover teams, who owns the rights to photos, video, and audio that journalist gather. Should any blogger be allowed into the locker room to gather information? Essentially, the article asks, "Who owns the right to sports coverage?" Isn't blogging part of our First Amendment Right? But when is it stealing from someone else's copyright?
Major League Baseball recently issued new rules limiting how the press can use photographs and audio and video clips on Web sites. Many organizations and publications, like Hearst, Gannett and Sports Illustrated, have refused to go along with the new rules. Their reason for this ruling being that too much video and audio on a newspaper’s Web site could infringe on rights holders — the broadcasters who pay millions of dollars to carry live games. Additionally, the MLB has its own website in which photos and videos are posted- they want to generate visitors to their site.
The issue issue is not just a sports one- Last week ABC News limited the length of video clips from a presidential debate- limiting other networks to only use 30 second clips. However, the importance of this issue is even more obvious in sports where it is all about seeing that one amazing catch, home run, touch down or such
10 years ago, this was not an issue; however today sports journalism demands audio, video, and photo to capture the moment. “I’m all for selling newspapers and magazines,” said Bob DuPuy, the president of M.L.B. “What I’m not for is them branching off in to other enterprises.” Baseball (and other sports) may need to get with the times- instead of trying to prevent media online- work with it!
M.L.B. gave in on one key point: It originally tried to limit the number of photographs in online galleries to seven. Now the language permits a “reasonable” number of photographs, with “reasonable” left undefined. However, the publications feel they have a right to use the material they gather as they see fit (whether that be in print or online- and online seems to be where the readers are) “From our perspective, any arbitrary restrictions on how we use our intellectual property for news coverage is not acceptable,” said Phil Bronstein, editor at large for Hearst. Bronstein continues to say that video is the future of journalism and sports must embrace it.
Jason Zillo, the head of media relations for the Yankees, states “We spend a lot of time in spring training on media training. The biggest danger now is that with some of these blog sites there is no structure. There is no one that John Smith reports to.” This is to a very large extend true- with the popularity of blogs, there is no control over what information gets put out there. However, before the Internet there were gossip rags and other ways of getting info out- while they may not have been as readily accessible they were there- The accessibility of the Internet is the fear!
As of now, each team makes their own rules- some allow bloggers into the locker rooms- others (like the Yankees) have strict limitations. Sports blogging is not going anywhere- if anything it will only get more popular, Professional sports better think of a way to handle it.
Full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/21/business/media/21bloggers.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=technology
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