by Shelly Brisbin

During his closing keynote speech at BlogWorld Expo, Mark Cuban told the story of how he started Blog Maverick, his personal blog. He explained that he had been interviewed by The Dallas Morning News and misled about the content of the story the paper intended to write. To set the record straight, he created a blog and published the chain of emails between himself and the News reporter. And so was born an outspoken blogger who takes on peo­ple (and media outlets) that give him a hard time, promotes his business interests, and comments on the tech industry.

For Cuban, and for the reputation of billionaire-sports-team owners in general, Blog Maverick (www.blogmaverick.com) has been a very good thing. Cuban gets to share his ideas with no filters or editors. He has a ready-made platform for promoting new ventures and fielding criticism, and more people around the world know his name. They call that personal branding. Based on the blog’s generally down-to-earth style, I would guess that Blog Maverick has also helped Cuban, who allows and receives lots of comments, staying in touch with people in walks of life from which he is far removed.

Readers benefit, too: would-be Cuban-imitators and other fans have a window into how the man thinks, what gets his goat, and how he man­ages a far-flung empire of businesses and personal interests.

Great! Awesome! Terrific! It’s cool that Mark Cuban is a prolific blogger; that he writes in an interesting style, varies his content enough to inter­est basketball fans and tech-industry followers. And it’s likely that a lot of people who don’t count billionaire sports-team-owner types among their friends are getting a vicarious window into a different world. For Cuban himself, and those who admire him, it’s great that he has created a forum where he can articulately spar with his critics. It’s also just plain entertain­ing. Finally, his example has probably influenced other “big shots” to blog, and to do so honestly.

For some in the blogosphere, though, it is the Blog Maverick cre­ation story that delights; the idea that one guy who had been wronged by a media outlet could expose a reporter’s treachery and turn that action into an important blog that survives long after the entrepreneur’s dust-up with his local paper. With no significant financial or technical barriers to publishing, bloggers can control their own messages, whether personal or business-related.

That’s great for the blogger, and for the blogging fans who harbor suspicion of the press on principle. But what does a blogging culture that prizes branding and message control over the old-fashioned values of fairness and fact-based storytelling actually provide the reader?

Now before you get riled up: I’m not accusing Mark Cuban or other opinion-based bloggers of untruthful­ness, nor am I questioning their place in the blog pantheon. These guys and gals have invented something entirely new in media, and forced those who previously had a monopoly on infor­mation dissemination to do their jobs better, and compete for attention. These are good things. I’m simply suggesting that a medium whose my­thology is so heavily dependent upon taking down the mainstream media runs the risk of becoming as myopic as it believes its predecessors to be.

Newspaper subscription rates are down because people want to con­sume information digitally and, un­fortunately, via video more than text. They aren’t suffering because people are tired of factual reporting of the news. Even bloggers quote and link to newspaper stories prodigiously, never seeming to be aware of the irony that the background information, or even the investigative sleuthing they use to bolster their arguments, have their source in the mainstream media, where reporters still have the resources (sometimes) to apply shoe leather to a story.

As social networks, online video, and other new media attractions cause bloggers to ponder where the medium is headed, I sincerely hope that the good things about old media — fact-based reporting, diversity of content, commitment to ethical standards — will take their natural place along­side the blogging virtues of interactiv­ity and transparency in the hearts and minds of new media practitioners. If they do, our readers will thank us.