This is a picture of our locker room. This is the area the media conducts their interviews post game. As it is now, between reporters, photographers (both still and video), trainers and the players, it gets pretty full.
Some out there will take this as my not "liking" blogs. Ridiculous. its the exact opposite. What I don't like is unequal access. I'm all for bloggers getting the same access as mainstream media when possible. Our interview room is open to bloggers. We take interview requests from bloggers. I'm a fan of getting as much coverage as possible for the Mavs. What I'm not a fan of is major media companies throwing their weight around thinking they should be treated differently.
This was in response to, primarily, this part of the blog post by Tim MacMahon at MavsBlog:
Unless Mark Cuban changes his mind, I won't be posting any more nuggets from the Mavs' locker room on this here blog.
I'm told that the timing is a coincidence, but the Mavs decided to ban bloggers from the locker room Feb. 29, the day after Jason Kidd watched the final 34 seconds in San Antonio and hours after I wrote this post reacting to some fans' Fire Avery crusade. It took the Mavs another week to craft the following policy.
I've managed to cover dozens of Mavs games over the last few seasons without seeing/causing a major overcrowding issue in the team's spacious locker room. To my knowledge, this policy won't affect any other credentialed media member who regularly attends Mavs games.
This may seem a bit like inside baseball (or basketball, as it were), but a number of Dallas bloggers seem fairly up in arms over the issue, and sports reporting is just as valid a form of journalism as just about any other (though I've talked to many warbloggers and stringers from wire services that reside in war zones that might look down their noses a bit at them).
As someone who isn't a huge basketball fan (and is only a fairweather fan to my local team, the Mavs), it's easy for me to dismiss the story entirely, but there certainly should be some middle ground to take for Cuban and Company in terms of credentialling bloggers to the lockerroom. The exclusionary practices of Cuban in this case remind me of my own experiences covering the presidential debate series in 2004.
At those events, the indy journalists truly received the short end of the stick. I wasn't able to stream the event, as getting on the local wifi cost $600 payable to Geek Squad (despite the fact that the whole event was rife with corporate underwriting). Getting to interview big names was easy, if they came to the foreign press room where the indy journalists seem to be relegated to (I was seated next to the South American and Southern European press, along with Juan Williams, ironically). Access to Spin Alley, where the big networks sat, required my news organization to make at least a $10,000 donation to the debate non-profit, where I could presumably have access to whomever from the campaigns deemed fit to grace the networks with their presences.