Mark Glaser’s latest piece just went up on PBS MediaShift, this time a look at Mark Cuban’s latest maverick project, Sharesleuth.com. The site’s editor Chris Carey (formerly of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch) investigates sketchy business practices at companies and digs up dirt on them mainly from public sources. The business model for Sharesleuth is unusual in that Cuban will
take positions in the companies covered. He shorted the stock for Xethanol before Carey’s expose came out, hoping to eventually fund Sharesleuth through these stock positions.
But journalists and financial bloggers have cried foul, saying while Sharesleuth’s business model might be legal, there are conflicts of interest with betting on the subjects of your investigative journalism. Cuban denies there are ethical problems, and says he’s not out to manipulate the market, and defends his new way of doing journalism:
“We aren’t writing reports to move stocks. We are writing reports to report the facts. Chris [Carey] hears that from me all the time. If I traded on price movements, then there might be an issue. I don’t. I don’t pump and dump [tout the stock, then sell it], and we don’t skunk and dump. I put on a position and stay with it till there is a material change in operations of the company. I don’t cover or sell my position based on reaction to this or any article in the media.”
Absolutely fascinating, and there are still models for citizen journalism yet to be uncovered. But I’m with Jeff Jarvis on this one. Says Jarvis:
“By turning this into a personal and shady profit center, by trying to play the bad boy in this arena as [Cuban] does in the basketball arena, he harmed his endeavor, his reputation, and even the nascent movement in independent journalism. Just so he could make a few bucks. Now that’s what I call dumb money.”
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
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