Ted Leonsis had some interesting things to say about the media during a panel at the Newseum. He showed how more and more owners want to dictate and drive the coverage of their teams.

From Dan Steinberg of the Washington Post:

“It’s interesting,” Leonsis said, turning to (Washington Post editor Marty Baron, who was the moderator). “I have said on a number of occasions, The Post forced me into that position. I bought a hockey team, and attendance was really bad, and we’d make news, and there’d be one reporter who’d come from the Washington Post. And The Post basically decided what was important, what got coverage. And they did their best. And I had to take into my own hands coverage.

“So the first thing I did was say, ‘Well, let’s activate a blogosphere. Let’s open up the information away from NBC and The Washington Post, and say fans who really really cover us and understand us, let’s give them the means and the tools to be just like the newspaper.’ And several of them took up that opportunity, and some even created businesses around it. And now when we have a press event, there’s literally more than 200 people that cover us — national, local, global. The blogosphere boomed. And now The Washington Post is A voice.

Later in the post:

The moderator then joked about how The Post forced him to do this.

“I would say cover my team,” Leonsis responded. “And I’d hear back, ‘Well, we can only afford one reporter, and we believe we will set the agenda that this is where hockey — just using one example — fits on the landscape.’ And I didn’t want to hear that as an answer.

“Since we’ve done that, by the way, we have 200 sold-out games in a row, we’ve become a bit of a phenomenon,” Leonsis said. “And I really see that as the blogosphere exploded, the coverage exploded, the team started to do better and the business picked up. And so yeah, I do believe that we’re seeing that across verticles, and that everyone is seeing that hey, I can be in the media business just like The Washington Post.”

“You’re welcome, by the way,” Baron quipped.