Dan's Thoughts

Recently Mark Cuban found himself once again amidst controversy. No, he was not being fined by David Stern for bashing officials. No, it did not have anything to do with his major involvement in the controversial rise of mixed martial arts. In fact, it was over a blog — and moreover, how little stock he puts into them.

Cuban discovered that one of the media permitted into the locker room during post game was actually a blogger, albeit for a legitimate news source– the Dallas Morning News. Mark decided not to allow him into the locker room because he felt bloggers should not have the same special privileges that traditional media have. In essence, why should the blogger from the news be allowed into the locker room but not any of the other millions of bloggers in America?

Why do people blog? To make money? Because they want to start a discussion? Because it is a wide ranging device to communicate with people? Because it’s a medium to tell the world what’s on your mind? Or something different altogether.

The point that Cuban is making, and I agree with him a million % — a blog is a blog is a blog. You can call yourself a reporter, or a columnist, or a webmaster, or whatever whatever. Blogger, TypePad, WordPress…all just blogs. If you’re trying to be credible on a blog, it’s an oxymoron.

Blogs are informal and lack credibility. And the best blogs are those that realize the informal nature of their blog and utilize it as so. Blogs should be used on a personal basis to keep the world updated to your happenings, a modern Public Relation device for small companies that want to save on outsourcing to PR firms, or another relative use, considering that it remains informal. The point of a blog is that the blogger needs to acknowledge that a blog is a blog is a blog.

If mainstream news is going to start blogging, as more and more are everyday, they need to rebrand the very idea idea of blogging — and get away from the world itself. Call it NewsNow or something. The idea of blogging is an overweight 35 year old taking a break from his World of Warcraft guild to spill his thoughts on why Ron Paul is such a revolutionary and the rest of the country are sheep.

I don’t even read through blogs for grammar or spelling errors. The idea that they should be taken seriously is absurd. Most blogs suck. They lack value. They don’t have advice, humor, ideas, jokes, informative content, etc. Want to be formal? Start a formal newsletter.

The Dallas Morning News, and all of you, should remember from now on that nothing can be deemed credible if you can log in and type your shit in five minutes. A blog is a blog is a blog. It is not a homepage. It is not a product or service. It is a voice mechanism in an increasing virtual world.