Why Should Newspapers Agree To MLB's Rules On How They Can Report On Baseball Online?
from the no-need-to-compromise dept
Back in February, we noted that Major League Baseball (MLB) was following the NFL down the extremely slippery slope of putting in place restrictions concerning how reporters could report on baseball online. This included things like only very short video clips could be posted online, no more than 7 photos, and all non-text content had to be removed in 72-hours. If that all sounds like preventing reporters from doing their job, you'd be correct. As I suggested at the time, the answer should be for newspapers to simply ignore the rules and if MLB pulls their press passes to buy their reporters tickets to the games (rather than using press passes) or see how the teams feel without press coverage. While it appears that newspapers certainly were upset about these restrictions, rather than doing anything serious about it, they've apparently negotiated a "compromise." The compromise allows newspapers to now host more video and audio content than the original restrictions, but everything still needs to be removed within 72-hours unless there's a special exemption.This is, of course, absolutely ridiculous. While it's perfectly legal (reporters don't need to get press passes, so the team can restrict them), it sets a tremendously bad precedent that journalists are allowing any outside control over how they can report on a game. This is all stemming from MLB's incorrect belief that it "owns" everything having to do with Major League Baseball -- and then wanting to artificially limit it so it can sell it to fans. Note that we're not just talking about actual game data here -- but interviews with the players that are conducted by the journalists. There's simply no legitimate reason why newspapers should allow MLB to dictate what it can do with that content or how it can report on it. All that this will do is serve to limit the kind of innovative reporting and community building that the MLB should be encouraging. It's a top down approach by an organization who thinks that only it can decide how people get access to news and info about the game. But it's going to stop newspapers from putting in place their own, perhaps more useful, services for fans, and that will only serve to limit the fanbase. It's upsetting that MLB would even try to do this and it's a travesty that newspapers acquiesced, even to the supposed "compromise" solution. It's opening the door to the MLB telling them what they can report on and any newspaper person should know better.
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Filed Under: baseball, journalism, newspapers, reporting, restrictions
Companies: mlb
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You're too nice.
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Re: You're too nice.
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Re: You're too nice.
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Let MLB take the heat.
If I were feeling cheeky, I'd include a link to Coralcdn's (http://www.coralcdn.org/ cached version of the page.
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MLB is foolish
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Re: Anaonymous coward
oh, and if you do not like baseball information, do not read it!
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Rediculous
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Explain please
This action by MLB is completely illogical. I fail to see their reasoning.
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Fiddling While Rome Burns
Likewise, baseball. Baseball's heydey is a half-century past. MLB thinks they're such a big deal, but with the huge proliferation of entertainment choices, their proportion of the pie is getting smaller, and stomping on the people who help to promote them and generate interest in them is short-sighted at best.
That's OK, though, because almost all the ham radio guys LOVE baseball.
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Tradeoff
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Re: Tradeoff
'Yeah, yeah, we just played real hard, we came out to play, we went out there and we played real hard, and it payed off you know, all that work in practice, we practiced real hard this past week, and we put in a lot of work, and when we came out, you know, and we came out to play, and we played real hard tonight... ' (continue endless run on sentence here with 37% chance of thanking Jesus somewhere in there)
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Being "America's pastime" doesn't seem to be a legit excuse.
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Re:
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Self-destruction is not against the law. What should be against the law is whining for government protection when near-sighted business models fail.
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Why doesn't anyone get serious?
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Now I realize not everybody is as tech-nerdy as me. But the numbers are growing. More and more people in the under 30 (and other) demographics don't give a damn what's on TV because we just don't watch it. Why would we waste our time sitting through commercials or waste our money for a TiVo box when we can Google exactly what we want to see and stream it on YouTube in under 15 seconds? If this is how the MLB adapts to the emergence of new technology and social trends then I'm not sure how long those multi-million dollar player contracts are going to last ...
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Not just American sports
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NCAA
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Cricket too goes down this line
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Re: Cricket too goes down this line
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MLB isnt news
Big difference.
They can put any restriction they want on the multimedia reproductions of its events, it doesn't affect journalistic integrity in any way to adhere to them.
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