Yes, Mark Cuban is a blowhard and, yes, his question here is obviously self-serving, but it’s also an important one — in many spheres, not just sports — as more and more publications cease print operations to go online-only.
He raised the point in part because only a single reporter covered his team’s recent game, whereas previously he has seen as many as ten.
The Morning News and all the local papers and online and offline media are still covering the Mavs. We still get the ink, but the real question is what would happen if our local papers shut down and went online-only? How would we reach the casual fan that won’t invest time to go to the online sports section or the Mavs website?
It’s a possibility I have to figure out how to deal with today.
Those of us who spend most of our waking hours online sometimes forget that there remains a significant swath of the public for whom the Internet is much less important … or not at all important. Reaching those people in a post-paper world will challenge more than the owners of professional basketball teams.
