As each year’s baseball season approaches, around the same time that Spring Training is getting underway, Major League Baseball issues its requirements for media credentials. These are the terms to which reporters, photographers and bloggers must agree to gain access to baseball parks and otherwise cover the games or use authorized content. Because the Internet has become a battleground between websites owned and operated by newspapers, stations, networks and other media that cover baseball and websites run by MLB and its franchises themselves, the negotiations over credentials between MLB and the Associated Press Sports Editors, the National Press Photographers Association, and various newspapers and magazines and other media agencies have become increasingly contentious and protracted.

This season, MLB opened the bidding by issuing guidelines banning all online galleries of baseball game photos, placing stricter limits on the number of photos that could be published from a game, the running time of online audio and video reports and the length of time certain online content could be archived. After six weeks of negotiations between MLB and APSE, which took the laboring oar on behalf of media generally, on April 9, 2008, APSE’s John Cherwa of the Orlando Sentinel reported that a deal had been reached with MLB, subject to the agreement of APSE’s membership. See this link. For a copy of the latest MLB terms and conditions, click here.

The principal issue for most sports editors had apparently been the restriction on photo galleries. MLB has now agreed to place no restrictions on photo galleries except that there be a “reasonable number of photos,” a requirement that was apparently taken from the National Football League’s credentials. There remain tighter limits on online audio and video (120 seconds) and archival use (72 hours). According to Cherwa, these limits are still unacceptable to APSE and will probably be the subject of future negotiations.

MLB is not the only sports organization to use its credentials requirements as leverage for giving its own Internet properties an advantage over the websites of media competitors. Even the Illinois High School Association attempted to restrict, albeit unsuccessfully, the “secondary use” of photographs taken at Illinois high school basketball and football games and tournaments. See the following links for more information: link 1 | link 2.