Do First Amendment rights exist in sports?
TUESDAY, 04 OCTOBER 2011 10:47
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/do-first-amendment-rights-exist-in-sports
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
If you watch the cable TV news networks or listen to newstalk radio or go through social media and message boards, you find out there are many United States Constitutional experts living throughout the country which probably comes as a big surprise to frustrated social studies teachers in junior high schools and high schools around the country. Those teachers probably didn't realize that when the lesson plan turn to the constitution the students really were listening while they dozed off as they ticked off every point the country's founding fathers articulated.
Some of those constitutional experts know all about the Second Amendment or whatever number they have specialized in so this may come as a shock for those who know the document inside out thanks to newstalk radio show hosts.
The first amendment need not apply to the freedom of speech in sports. Dallas Mavericks owner (and freelance writer) Mark Cuban has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines speaking his mind when it comes to matters in the National Basketball Association. The NBA Commissioner David Stern has levied fines against Cuban for talking about the NBA's officiating. According to some media outlets Charlotte Bobcats owner Michael Jordan was fined $100,000 for his words which looked like rather benign comments about the NBA lockout to a reporter from the Herald News in Australia.
Jordan told the reporter that "the model we've been operating under is broken. We have 22 or 23 teams losing money, (so) I think we have gotta come to some kind of understanding in this partnership that we have to realign." It is not surprising that Michael Jordan, one of the three players who made David Stern a sports genius was fined. Sports leagues seem to have no probably squashing and trampling over first amendment rights and that applies to opinion piece writers as well for someone writing about sports business for a newspaper that happened to be owned and operated by a Major League Baseball franchise baron.
The Chicago Tribune Company owned the Chicago Cubs and in the company's media portfolio was the Baltimore Sun. In late July 2002, while Major League Baseball owners and the Major League Baseball Players Association were negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement, I was an occasional contributor to the Sun writing Op-Ed pieces for Richard Gross's Op-Ed page. Richard was going on vacation but before he left he edited down one of my thought pieces which instructed baseball fans how to fight back against Major League Baseball owners by boycotting their "real" businesses. It was on the possible work stoppage in baseball sometime in late August or early September. We went over the piece, we both agreed it was in the "all the news fit to print" category and were satisfied with the result.
Richard left on vacation and the opinion piece never saw the light of day until 2005 in a book of my columns which was targeted for sports business management students in colleges and universities. Some higher up at the Chicago Tribune Company killed the piece. Those “higher ups” were never identified but it hit too close to home for them.
Officially the Baltimore Sun stance was that the paper didn’t support boycotts but that didn’t fly as the paper supported the South Africa economic boycott during that country’s days of Apartheid.
The column just didn’t fit with the Baltimore Sun’s style.
It was too radical for the staid Chicago Tribune Company and CEO Stanton Cook, one of the alleged architects of the 1994 baseball meltdown which cost the industry the playoffs and World Series.
"If you listen to sports talk radio or read writers from all walks of life writing about a possible baseball strike, there is a sense of resignation: The fans are saps with no voice who are hopelessly devoted to baseball.
"Simply put, baseball fans have no control over the situation in the spat between multi-millionaire owners and millionaire players if and when the players walk out.
"But baseball fans should know they can fight back and hit both sides hard where it hurts?
"The pocketbook. And here's how the fans can mount a counteroffensive:
"They should contact their state attorney general's office and make sure a mechanism is in place to ensure that they get refunds from games missed on cable TV. The refunds to the country's 86 million cable subscribers, who receive sports channels even if they don't want them, should come from the cable TV owners who transmit the baseball games.
"In Baltimore, that's Comcast, because it has the rights to show the Orioles.
"Fans should call their local, not national, elected officials. In those cities where the municipality helped to pay for a new baseball stadium, make sure that the team continues to pay rent during a baseball work stoppage. Municipalities should sue if a team withholds its rent because games were canceled.
"Baseball fans have enormous power; all they have to do is act. There's the all-time favorite, the boycott.
"For example, if fans are upset with San Francisco Giants owner Peter McGowan, don't shop at Safeway; he's a director of the supermarket's board after having been its chairman and CEO. If Dodger fans don't like Rupert Murdoch's role in the baseball stalemate, they don't have to watch the Fox network or go to movies produced by 20th Century Fox.
"Hungry and want some pizza? Don't buy Detroit Tiger owner Mike Ilitch's Little Caesar's products.
"Looking to go to a theme park in Orlando, Fla., or southernbCalifornia? Scratch the Disney parks in either locale. Also don't watch ESPN, ESPN2, ESP News, ESPN Classic, listen to ESPN Radio or see any Disney movies. The Walt Disney Co. owns the Anaheim Angels.
"The media?
“AOL Time Warner owns the Atlanta Braves. You can drop AOL as your Internet provider and seek another one. You don't have to buy Sports Illustrated, Time or People, watch CNN or CNN Headline News, the Cartoon Channel, HBO or go to New Line Cinema movies, buy Kodak products or spend a day at Warner Brothers Recreation Enterprises and theme parks or buy Atlantic Records products.
"Check stadium names. Budweiser, or Busch Stadium (St. Louis), Coors Field (Denver), Miller Park (Milwaukee), Minute Maid Field (Houston), Tropicana Field (St. Petersburg) are spending millions on partnerships, but there are other beers and juices to drink.
"Bank One (Phoenix), Comerica (Detroit) and PNC (Pittsburgh) aren't the only financial institutions around. Edison (Anaheim) and Cinergy (Cincinnati) are just two energy companies available. Network Associates (Oakland) and Qualcomm (San Diego) are just two of many technology companies. Don't shop at Safeco (Seattle).
"Fans don't need to buy baseball cards, which puts money into player's pockets, nor do they need to attend baseball card shows or stand in line for autographs.
"Fans should boycott buying licensed products and keep their money in their pockets instead of lining the pockets of both players and owners. “Sure, fans can boycott a game here and there and make a minor stand. But that won't send any messages to the owners and players who continue to bicker over how to split up billions of dollars.
"Some 70 million people attend Major League baseball games annually. Millions watch them on TV or listen to them on the radio. If just a fraction of that audience reacts, both the owners and players will get the message, and it could force a settlement in a hurry."
In 2002, the owners and players settled without a labor action.
When Richard Gross returned to work he had no real explanation for me. It wasn't his fault that someone upstairs had killed the column and clearly someone was very concerned about the thoughts.
No one today is suggesting a boycott of other NBA held businesses.
In New York James Dolan and Cablevision would feel an impact of Cablevision subscribers defecting to satellite TV because there are no Knicks games being played thanks to an owners’ lockout. In Los Angeles, Donald Sterling probably doesn't have to worry about turning people off from his residential holdings because his Los Angeles Clippers players have been locked out of the workplace. No NBA beat sportswriter would ever dare write that as that would be treason and all friendly accessibility to the team would be lost.
But it would be very easy to track the other businesses for some enterprising writer who worked for an outlet whose history included supporting the South Africa boycott.
Dolan bought Newsday from the Chicago Tribune Company and the business of the Knicks and the lockout's impact on that team will probably go unreported as will the 1998-99 lockout effort by Golden State Warriors owner Chris Cohan to avoid paying rent to the Oakland Coliseum owners Oakland and Alameda County taxpayers because he didn't play games as scheduled.
Cohan ended up paying the rent after going to arbitration and sold his team in 2010 for about $450 million.
The Chicago Tribune Company sold the Baltimore Sun along with other papers and properties to former Chicago White Sox minority partner Sam Zell who apparently overpaid for the properties and could not afford to maintain the newspaper at 2002 worker levels. The Sun is a shell of a newspaper these days. The Cubs franchise along with Wrigley Field also was jettisoned.
There is limited free speech in sports. People like NBA Commissioner David Stern and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell gagged NBA and NFL owners and threatened them with fines for talking about the lockouts. Goodell fined Tennessee Titans owner Bud Adams for giving the finger to someone as he sat in his owner’s box watching his Titans play. Major League Baseball commissioners have put up gag orders on the owners during labor talks.
Sports fans and constitutional experts on radio, TV and message boards should take note.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition" is available at bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or Amazon Kindle.
Showing posts with label mark cuban. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mark cuban. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Friday, January 30, 2009
Should Sports Leagues Bailout Newspapers Sports Sections?
Should Sports Leagues Bailout Newspapers Sports Sections?
By Evan Weiner
12:00 PM
January 30, 2009
(New York, NY) – A few weeks ago, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban suggested that perhaps it was time for sports leagues like the National Basketball Association and sports teams to serious think about forming what he called a “beatwriter co-operative.” Cuban laid out a premise that “pro sports, every single league from the NFL to NBA to MLB to MLS to NHL need newspapers” because local coverage of teams on the Internet is not as extensive as it would be in a hometown newspaper.
Newspapers in the United States, Spain and France to name three countries are becoming an endangered species. The New York Times is in major financial trouble. The Chicago Tribune newspapers, which include the flagship Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times and the Baltimore Sun among others is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U. S. The Minneapolis Tribune is suffering the same financial fate. The Rocky Mountain News is still in business in the Denver, Colorado area but it may join the New York Sun and the Cincinnati Post as recent additions to newspaper heaven. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is on death row and will be put to bed permanently in less than two months unless a buyer emerges. The Tucson Citizen will give up the fight in March. The Baltimore Examiner will vanish in two weeks.
Gannett is ordering workers to take a one-week leave without pay. In Spain, the Metro newspapers have been put out of business. In France, the government is giving 18-year-olds a free newspaper subscription to whatever paper that 18-year-old wants in an effort to get young people interested in reading a newspaper and the country plans to double France’s advertising commitment to county newspapers.
America’s radio and TV industry are also in awful financial shape. Even the World Wide Sports Leader, ESPN, is lopping off workers.
There are numerous reasons for the state of the media industry in the U. S.. Radio was severely hampered by the 1996 Tele Communications Act which allowed companies like Clear Channel and Infinity to became behemoths and own hundreds and thousands of radio stations and the industry consolidated as by 2005 there were six major media companies controlling radio. The model proved unworkable. Clear Channel wants to exit the industry and Infinity would like to follow.
There is too much TV product now with hundreds of cable TV stations competing with the traditional American TV networks, ABC, CBS and NBC along with what really is a syndicator of product, not a network FOX. But the radio and TV discussion should be left for another day. Mark Cuban wants to talk about newspapers.
In Cuban’s Dallas market, the Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star Telegram plan to share content. Sam Zell’s Chicago Tribune Company’s Baltimore Sun and the Washington Post will be sharing stories. Paradoxically, with the Internet, sports talk radio, cable TV, cell phones and radio there is more information available to the consumer but in sports, the local newspaper and the beat writer are the lifeblood between the fans and the teams.
The dirty secret that is well known in the media industry but not to fans is that sports talk radio could not exist without the beat writer. The beat writer generates the story, which the sports talk radio hosts read and then put his or hers spin on what the beat writer reported. The same holds true with TV sports readers on local news, but that might be a dying business as well as local TV news executives look at the bottom line and look to cut out costly segments of newscasts.
Cuban’s suggestion, made on December 24, 2008, would have been unworkable in the past. Newspapers do accept advertising money from teams and there are stories from the early 1960s about certain baseball writers who would pocket airline fares that were supposed to be given back to teams for flying on charters in exchange for favorable articles. But there was supposed to be a wall between a journalist and a subject that journalist was covering.
But newspapers are looking at various funding methods, including accepting donations and turning themselves into a not for profit venture. Accepting a government bailout like France is offering would have been unthinkable but the United States government has propped up ESPN, CNN, MSNBC, FOX, a plethora of regional sports networks, Comedy Central and other cable TV networks through the 1984 Cable TV Act which allowed cable systems operators to take The Weather Channel, CNN, ESPN and bundle them into a basic expanded tier and deny cable subscribers to buy those channels on an a la carte basis. CNN, MSNBC and FOX are taking money from subscribers whether those subscribers want that programming or not. Those are bona fide news organizations that exist because of the way the government allows them to be funded.
CNN, MSNBC, FOX, the New York’s area News1, News 12, the DC area’s NewsChannel 8 and other cable TV news covers the people who help fund them---the US Government.
Newspapers should not be slammed if Cuban’s idea gains traction. After all, CNN has lived that way for 25 years; they have been funded by people who are buying a basic expanded tier. Without that law, CNN, MSNBC and FOX would be scrambling to make ends meet. It is so funny that people on FOX like Sean Hannity scream about government involvement in too many programs and how a gadfly like Grover Norquist goes on cable TV shows screaming about the need for smaller government in the U. S. without acknowledging that cable TV funding method that was mandated by Congress and President Ronald Reagan, a small government advocate and someone who was for media deregulation. Hannity would not be making a living without government assistance both on Cable TV and radio.
So there is a precedent for Cuban’s newspaper bailout plan.
For what it is worth, here is the Cuban “beatwriters co-operative.” Cuban wrote, “we need to create a company that funds, depending on the size of the market and the number of teams, 2 or more writers per market, to cover our teams in depth. The writers would cover multiple teams and multiple sports. They will report to the newspapers where the articles will be placed, who will have complete editorial control. In exchange, the newspapers will provide a minimum of a full page on a daily basis in season, and some lesser amount out of season. That the coverage will include game reporting that is of far more depth than is currently in place, along with a minimum number of feature articles each week in and out of season. And most importantly, these articles will be exclusive to print subscribers”
Cuban even is suggesting a pay scale for those writers, $65,000 annually with $10,000 worth of health benefits and that big markets pay more into the “beatwriter co-operative” than small markets for the 100 writers that are needed.
Cuban did not include golf, tennis, boxing writers in his plan nor did he discuss Olympics coverage. His plan is as he pointed out, a starting point.
Whether the leagues and teams will say yes is another story. The NBA and NFL have laid off employees, individual teams have cut back employees including the Washington Redskins. Even Cuban realizes that having leagues pay for sportswriters is a “violation of editorial church and state.” But Cuban rationalized his idea by writing “watching papers going out of business and not even being able to give themselves away means its time to start a new branch of that church.”
Newspapers owners arrogance is a big part of the newspaper problem. Newspapers were slow to react to the changing world. Newspapers did survive radio, which delivered news faster than a paper in the 1920s, 30s and 40s and in World War II. They survived TV, which televised events, but newspapers didn’t know how to use new technology and have failed to become multi-media properties. Craig Newmark’s Craig’s List destroyed the help wanted, things for sale sections of newspapers and deprived papers of a major source of income. The newspapers didn’t see that coming. Nor did they see a recession coming and the tightening of credit lines.
Cuban’s suggestion might not prevent the continued erosion of sports coverage in newspapers. Cuban’s plan does not factor in the cost of putting a writer on the road which includes travel, hotel-motel, car rentals and eating bills which is a huge expense as two papers in New England have found out.
The Red Sox Nation around New England will not get stories from Boston Red Sox spring training from a beat writer for the Hartford Courant or from the Portland (Maine) Press Herald, but there will be enough coverage to go around New England. Newspapers need to get very local anyway, they need to cover school board meetings and little league baseball and if they do that people will buy the product.
By Evan Weiner
12:00 PM
January 30, 2009
(New York, NY) – A few weeks ago, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban suggested that perhaps it was time for sports leagues like the National Basketball Association and sports teams to serious think about forming what he called a “beatwriter co-operative.” Cuban laid out a premise that “pro sports, every single league from the NFL to NBA to MLB to MLS to NHL need newspapers” because local coverage of teams on the Internet is not as extensive as it would be in a hometown newspaper.
Newspapers in the United States, Spain and France to name three countries are becoming an endangered species. The New York Times is in major financial trouble. The Chicago Tribune newspapers, which include the flagship Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times and the Baltimore Sun among others is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U. S. The Minneapolis Tribune is suffering the same financial fate. The Rocky Mountain News is still in business in the Denver, Colorado area but it may join the New York Sun and the Cincinnati Post as recent additions to newspaper heaven. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is on death row and will be put to bed permanently in less than two months unless a buyer emerges. The Tucson Citizen will give up the fight in March. The Baltimore Examiner will vanish in two weeks.
Gannett is ordering workers to take a one-week leave without pay. In Spain, the Metro newspapers have been put out of business. In France, the government is giving 18-year-olds a free newspaper subscription to whatever paper that 18-year-old wants in an effort to get young people interested in reading a newspaper and the country plans to double France’s advertising commitment to county newspapers.
America’s radio and TV industry are also in awful financial shape. Even the World Wide Sports Leader, ESPN, is lopping off workers.
There are numerous reasons for the state of the media industry in the U. S.. Radio was severely hampered by the 1996 Tele Communications Act which allowed companies like Clear Channel and Infinity to became behemoths and own hundreds and thousands of radio stations and the industry consolidated as by 2005 there were six major media companies controlling radio. The model proved unworkable. Clear Channel wants to exit the industry and Infinity would like to follow.
There is too much TV product now with hundreds of cable TV stations competing with the traditional American TV networks, ABC, CBS and NBC along with what really is a syndicator of product, not a network FOX. But the radio and TV discussion should be left for another day. Mark Cuban wants to talk about newspapers.
In Cuban’s Dallas market, the Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star Telegram plan to share content. Sam Zell’s Chicago Tribune Company’s Baltimore Sun and the Washington Post will be sharing stories. Paradoxically, with the Internet, sports talk radio, cable TV, cell phones and radio there is more information available to the consumer but in sports, the local newspaper and the beat writer are the lifeblood between the fans and the teams.
The dirty secret that is well known in the media industry but not to fans is that sports talk radio could not exist without the beat writer. The beat writer generates the story, which the sports talk radio hosts read and then put his or hers spin on what the beat writer reported. The same holds true with TV sports readers on local news, but that might be a dying business as well as local TV news executives look at the bottom line and look to cut out costly segments of newscasts.
Cuban’s suggestion, made on December 24, 2008, would have been unworkable in the past. Newspapers do accept advertising money from teams and there are stories from the early 1960s about certain baseball writers who would pocket airline fares that were supposed to be given back to teams for flying on charters in exchange for favorable articles. But there was supposed to be a wall between a journalist and a subject that journalist was covering.
But newspapers are looking at various funding methods, including accepting donations and turning themselves into a not for profit venture. Accepting a government bailout like France is offering would have been unthinkable but the United States government has propped up ESPN, CNN, MSNBC, FOX, a plethora of regional sports networks, Comedy Central and other cable TV networks through the 1984 Cable TV Act which allowed cable systems operators to take The Weather Channel, CNN, ESPN and bundle them into a basic expanded tier and deny cable subscribers to buy those channels on an a la carte basis. CNN, MSNBC and FOX are taking money from subscribers whether those subscribers want that programming or not. Those are bona fide news organizations that exist because of the way the government allows them to be funded.
CNN, MSNBC, FOX, the New York’s area News1, News 12, the DC area’s NewsChannel 8 and other cable TV news covers the people who help fund them---the US Government.
Newspapers should not be slammed if Cuban’s idea gains traction. After all, CNN has lived that way for 25 years; they have been funded by people who are buying a basic expanded tier. Without that law, CNN, MSNBC and FOX would be scrambling to make ends meet. It is so funny that people on FOX like Sean Hannity scream about government involvement in too many programs and how a gadfly like Grover Norquist goes on cable TV shows screaming about the need for smaller government in the U. S. without acknowledging that cable TV funding method that was mandated by Congress and President Ronald Reagan, a small government advocate and someone who was for media deregulation. Hannity would not be making a living without government assistance both on Cable TV and radio.
So there is a precedent for Cuban’s newspaper bailout plan.
For what it is worth, here is the Cuban “beatwriters co-operative.” Cuban wrote, “we need to create a company that funds, depending on the size of the market and the number of teams, 2 or more writers per market, to cover our teams in depth. The writers would cover multiple teams and multiple sports. They will report to the newspapers where the articles will be placed, who will have complete editorial control. In exchange, the newspapers will provide a minimum of a full page on a daily basis in season, and some lesser amount out of season. That the coverage will include game reporting that is of far more depth than is currently in place, along with a minimum number of feature articles each week in and out of season. And most importantly, these articles will be exclusive to print subscribers”
Cuban even is suggesting a pay scale for those writers, $65,000 annually with $10,000 worth of health benefits and that big markets pay more into the “beatwriter co-operative” than small markets for the 100 writers that are needed.
Cuban did not include golf, tennis, boxing writers in his plan nor did he discuss Olympics coverage. His plan is as he pointed out, a starting point.
Whether the leagues and teams will say yes is another story. The NBA and NFL have laid off employees, individual teams have cut back employees including the Washington Redskins. Even Cuban realizes that having leagues pay for sportswriters is a “violation of editorial church and state.” But Cuban rationalized his idea by writing “watching papers going out of business and not even being able to give themselves away means its time to start a new branch of that church.”
Newspapers owners arrogance is a big part of the newspaper problem. Newspapers were slow to react to the changing world. Newspapers did survive radio, which delivered news faster than a paper in the 1920s, 30s and 40s and in World War II. They survived TV, which televised events, but newspapers didn’t know how to use new technology and have failed to become multi-media properties. Craig Newmark’s Craig’s List destroyed the help wanted, things for sale sections of newspapers and deprived papers of a major source of income. The newspapers didn’t see that coming. Nor did they see a recession coming and the tightening of credit lines.
Cuban’s suggestion might not prevent the continued erosion of sports coverage in newspapers. Cuban’s plan does not factor in the cost of putting a writer on the road which includes travel, hotel-motel, car rentals and eating bills which is a huge expense as two papers in New England have found out.
The Red Sox Nation around New England will not get stories from Boston Red Sox spring training from a beat writer for the Hartford Courant or from the Portland (Maine) Press Herald, but there will be enough coverage to go around New England. Newspapers need to get very local anyway, they need to cover school board meetings and little league baseball and if they do that people will buy the product.
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