Jarvis: Cuban is making a mistake

Jeff Jarvis notes on his blog “BuzzMachine” that Mark Cuban will be the keynote speaker at the Online News Association will obviously talk about the investigative business journalism site ShareSleuth.com that he has funded.

But Jarvis has harsh words for Cuban. He wrote, “Cuban says he is being transparent: He says he warned us that he would trade on the information Chris Carey, his editor at Sharesleuth, digs up. Except that he’s not transparent at all — not until after a story about a stock is released. He has a period of utter opaqueness when he knows a company is crap and you don’t — nya, nya, nya — and so he gets to trade on his information and take money not from the offending company but from the poor shlub on the other end of Cuban’s trade.

“Cuban tries to say that he is underwriting this journalism to do what journalism is supposed to do: help the poor shlub. Except he already took the shlub to the cleaners. Doesn’t wash.”

Later, Jarvis added, “You see, journalism is, in the end, about trust and credibility and this is what Cuban is doing to his. Mind you, Cuban is right to ridicule the trust and credibility of stock analysts and much financial journalism that just sucks up what those analysts and company flacks feed them. They, too, don’t protect the public. But just because they’re bad, does that mean you need to be? Two wrongs, etc.”

Read more here.