Mavericks Owner Mark Cuban discussed the state of sports journalism Wednesday on KZTK-FM, arguing that it has "changed people who were journalists into page view trolls." Cuban: "They write to get page views, they write to keep their jobs as opposed to writing what they think would be the best journalism." He added, "You can't name one single person, maybe outside of Bill Simmons, who feels secure in their job in the sportswriting side of things. ... Look at ESPN. When Jalen Rose gets a DUI, they don't write about it. Why? Is it not news? Maybe, maybe not, but it certainly is to protect who they are as a business. When Erin Andrews had all that peephole stuff, they didn't write about it. Why? Because it wasn't news? Well everybody else covered it. They wanted to protect their branding and their image. The Mavs are no different. We have to make decisions based off of what we think is going to put us in the best position to succeed." More Cuban: "The bigger point that everybody's missing is that, they're saying, 'Well, we're not going to go to the Mavs' website.' Trust me, if I wanted to hire you or Adrian Wojnarowski or Marc Stein and just let them go and do their thing and have them (do it) from the Mavs' own website, I can easily do it and have just as much impact" (KZTK-FM, 4/6). Yahoo Sports' Wojnarowski responded to Cuban's comments, saying, "Mark is a great owner and a great businessman but I don't believe that he believes Mavs.com will ever compete with Yahoo! Sports on the NBA -- or compete with any of the major sports sites. And for the vast fortune Mark's amassed, I know he doesn't believe he will ever have enough money to hire me to work for a team website. Maybe it didn't sound like it in the audio but I think he's kidding" (SPORTSBYBROOKS.com, 4/6).
BYPASS THE MIDDLE MAN: Cuban on his blog earlier this week wrote, "The internet reporters who get paid" are to the Mavericks and "any other sports team, the least valuable of all media." He added, "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." Cuban wondered, "Why do we let them in the door? What value do they serve to the Mavs? ... Unlike TV and Newspaper, I have access to reach their online audience. ... Why not just use twitter, Facebook fan pages, Mavs.com and or our own media platforms to communicate with online Mavs customers and fans?" (BLOGMAVERICK.com, 4/4).
