Michael Grange of the Globe and Mail has responded to my long post about the Mavericks banning bloggers. He says some nice things about TrueHoop (fine man, that Grange) and essentially agrees that Cuban does not make sense on this issue.

Then he adds:

Henry has some good suggestions regarding traffic quotas that would suggest certain legitimacy, but he's missing one important element: accountability.

One advantage the Globe or any mainstream media outlet offers is that if we do something wrong and someone objects, they can sue us for a lot of money and actually expect to get paid out. This reality informs our ethics and professional conduct (laugh if you must). The Globe really doesn't want to get sued and have to pay out big cash. As a result, I have a policy of not making things up and stick to it. This helps me keep my job.

If I was Cuban or anyone else trying to separate the wheat from chaff in I would include that among the criteria.

I see Grange's point, but let me tell you why I don't think it is a big part of a conversation about who should and should not be credentialed.

When I owned TrueHoop, every time I hit "post" there was a chance I would lose my house if I was sloppy with the facts and someone like Mark Cuban took me to task.

Now? I have an army of ESPN lawyers and insurance policies on my side. (Right? Guys? Hey, where'd everyone go?)

I'm careful as always about what I do and don't publish, but I'm no longer thinking my house is in play.

Plus, I'm advocating the team use its discretion to dole out credentials. If some blogger is not proven to be habitually responsible with facts, they ought not to be getting credentials anyway. But the ones who are habitually responsible -- and I say they are not hard to identify over time -- have more than enough legal and financial motivation to be accurate.

The second they have to hire an attorney, most would be losing money on the year. These are not people looking for trouble.

Not to mention, Mark Cuban doesn't seem to be worried about this.  

As an aside not related to the Mavericks in particular, I have heard a different theory about why some teams might be more comfortable with mainstream instead of independent media: because if things go poorly with a journalist (those hotheads!) then the team has a mechanism to sort things out, namely by going over the writer's head.

Many teams have leverage with media executives -- teams are typically big local advertisers, for instance -- that might give them a fighting chance to get a writer cooled down or steered in another direction if things get rocky. 

A typical blog is a one-writer publishing operation that runs on passion. That's a dance partner that could step on a team's toes.