Mark Cuban cracks me up. The fiery Dallas Mavericks last week scored what will probably stand as the all-time heftiest fine laid down on a blogger for something written on his blog.
Cuban should be revered as a hero to bloggers worldwide. Not only does he keep a personal blog (and is probably the only major sports franchise owner to do so), but it's constantly updated with his thoughts on business, personal life, and more. This is a guy worth hundreds of millions of dollars, yet he takes the time to keep a fascinating blog dealing with the edge of technology, personal media, and of course, the haphazard officiating by NBA referees.
Today, Mark posted a missive about blogging vs. traditional media. Despite what some might lead you to believe, blogging and traditional media are vastly different. Yes, there are major corporations that understand blogging, but the majority of traditional media outlets (newspapers, magazines, etc) haven't even begun to grasp the concept of what blogging could really be about. They're still trying to live in the old world of deadlines, when the blogosphere is much more current, up to date, and REAL.
I very rarely visit any regular media outlets on the web. I haven't read a newspaper on a regular basis in three years. There's no point. If I need news, I can always check out technorati, because the chances are pretty good that I'll be able to stay current on the news AND get the opinions of someone who was actually THERE when the news was being made. When given the option of getting first-hand accounts of the news or getting a wire report that's been filtered a dozen times, I'm going to take the blog route.
Traditional media is dying. It will never truly die, but if some of these news corporations don't take a step back and revamp themselves into a more blog-styled view of the news, they're going to be outpaced in ten years by bloggers.
blogging is not the news…for the most part it’s people’s opinions on what is going on….
the newspaper is still good for you…
98 percent of blogging is still crap
Nah. You’re just not looking in the right spots. Nearly 40% of stories broken these days in the sports arena hit blogs before they hit the newspapers.
I’m not talking about personal blogs; I’m talking about major, funded blogs like Engadget or Deadspin, or even All Fair Game. You’re getting stuff there that’s more relevant than most anything on the news these days.