A group of bloggers at DenverSportsZone.com have initiated a movement called MLB Fair Press to "force Major League Baseball to open up its press pass policy to include the world of legitimate blogging." According to the site, baseball currently bans clubs from giving press credentials to any website from outside the mainstream press.
The movement is actually quite reasonable. It asserts that "every Joe with a blog" should not be able to get access to teams. Rather, the manifesto posits that MLB needs to have some evaluative process in place. To my knowledge, none of the major sports leagues or their franchises have ongoing discussions with bloggers, although some teams have made small efforts.
Sports journalists, meanwhile, are not amused, according to Gabe Stein, who runs DenverSportsZone.com. Several have emailed him and a discussion has erupted on forums frequented by journos.
Like other institutions - governments, businesses, non-profits - the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and Nascar are not exempt from the force of 37 million bloggers. The major sports leagues in the US will need to open up and build a dialogue with their most vocal online fans. Little steps will go a long way.
The teams should tear a page from the playbook for the 2004 Democratic National Convention. For example, they could create special RSS feeds for all sports bloggers. They could also invite a select group of "pool" bloggers (sports and general local bloggers) to special "Blogger Days" during training camp or Spring Training.
This is a dynamic that will be fascinating to watch in the weeks and months ahead. Fueled by passion, the sports blogopshere has been growing rapidly and their power is just reaching the shores of the leagues and the journalists who cover them.
