FanHouse

In a fairly curious decision, Mark Cuban (blogger) has directed his team to implement a policy against allowing bloggers into the Mavericks' locker room. The ban came about after Cuban had discovered that a regular reporter for the Dallas Morning News was in fact writing the paper's blog about the team.

At first glance, Cuban's decision seems unfairly slanted against those who don't have the power of a major media outlet behind them, but who still have an opinion and the passion to share that opinion about the team or the game on their blog. But according to Cuban (again, on his blog), it's really the opposite: he doesn't think the media should be using their power to get their own blogs preferential treatment over the ones that aren't printed in say, a daily newspaper.

What I didn't like was that the Morning News was getting a competitive advantage simply because they were the Dallas Morning News. I am of the opinion that a blogger for one of the local newspapers is no better or worse than the blogger from the local high school, from the local huge Mavs fan, from an out of town blogger. I want to treat them all the same.

Unfortunately, there isn't enough room to allow any and all bloggers in the locker room. There also are no standards that I have been able to come up with that differentiate between bloggers to the point where I should or should not credential one versus the other.

That seems fair enough, I suppose. Although at one point Cuban says that he thinks blogs don't necessarily need media access to do what they do, and while that might be true, the prime example of where media access provides invaluable blog material can be found at Dan Steinberg's D.C. Sports Bog. But despite what the new policy claims, this may not be about every blogger, it might just be about the one from the Dallas Morning News, Tim MacMahon.

The Dallas Morning News claims that this new ban is directly aimed at MacMahon, who the paper claims was asked to leave the locker room on February 29th after posting a piece that was critical of Mavs' head coach Avery Johnson. The paper filed an official protest because they say that so far, their man Tim MacMahon is the only one that has been technically banned because of this new policy.

The NBA is now aware of the dispute, and is "looking into the whole issue of locker room access for bloggers." Until they implement a formal policy on it though, expect Cuban's ironic ban to stand, whether it was motivated by retribution or not.