More on Mark Cuban's Folly

Business Week online today has a good piece on Mark Cuban's tin-eared approach to financial investigative journalism -- an otherwise laudable venture that he plans to exploit to trade stocks based on the stuff his reporters dig up. (Hat tip: Talking Biz News blog.)

Got to admit, it's handy having financial journalists on your payroll when you want to trade!

“There are a million ugly stories in the financial underground,” Cuban told BusinessWeek.com in an e-mail. “We plan on finding and sharing and profiting from them.” He declined to comment further.

Of course not. What more is there to say? I mean, when you're a billionaire and stuff like that, you can do whatever you damn well please, and I suppose that includes turning investigative journalism into a private money machine. “At first blush, it just sounds so weird it's kind of hard to get my mind around,” said one journalism dean quoted by BW.

What I find particularly noxious about Cuban's Folly is that it feeds all the misperceptions about journalism being promoted by the conspiracy nuts of the short-bashing Baloney Brigade. Of course, Cuban has got a nice basketball team and stuff to fall back on, so not to worry.

This episode is, I think, a good example of the mentality that I've encountered all too often on Wall Street. Making a buck is everything, and the rest of the world can go to hell.

© 2006 Gary Weiss

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