A friend emailed me this story this morning from the Courier-Journal in Louisville, KY. The summary: The NCAA kicked out a sports reporter from the NCAA baseball tournament because he was doing a blog while covering the game, in violation of the NCAA’s rules about unauthorized Internet broadcasts of its events.
This is one of those old world meets new world struggles that is both serious and silly at the same time. Serious because net broadcasts come in all shapes and sizes, from print to video, from commentary to the whole match. Broadcasters pay rights to broadcast, and they don’t want people to watch the game through some back door. And silly, because, it’s just a blogger filing some notes and outtakes from a laptop.
From the perspective of a newspaper person who has at times had a love/hate relationship with the Web, I can tell you this. The Internet always wins. Maybe not today. Or tomorrow. But eventually. Not just newspapers, either. But all institutions, from governments to businesses. The Web is about the flow of information, and that flow can’t be denied. It can be slowed. But that’s it. The NCAA can boot the credentialed journalist. But my guess is there’s somebody in the stands with a BlackBerry doing essentially the same thing. Next year, he’ll bring a laptop. The following year, he’ll have video off his camera phone. And so on and so on.
New media. New rules.
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