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There is nothing wrong with women’s sports. They are not a puzzle to be solved. On many levels throughout the country and the world, they are doing well.
The coverage of women’s sports? Well, that’s always an issue to discuss.
Where students once turned kinesiology degrees into sports media professions in dorm room basements, the Media School now provides a home for collaborative efforts across disciplines in industry-grade facilities.
What hasn’t changed, and continues to fuel the growth of active, independent student organizations like IUSTV, is the culture of thinking outside the classroom and not waiting for others to create the opportunities they can create themselves.
One of the most interesting developments in sports journalism in the past decade has been the growth of team and league websites as news sources and the hiring of sports journalists by those sites. The journalists often act as “team journalists,” which to traditionally minded sports reporters sounds like an oxymoron but has increased the amount of information available to fans and readers.
It was a fantastic moment, quintessential March.
Except … Until.
The referees huddled around the monitor. They checked the time. They checked it again. They made sure that the clock was correct. They added .3 of a second back on the clock. Enough time for a theoretical basket, but in practice, the game was over.
The way the NCAA Selection Committee picks the tournament field is broken, and the way sports journalists cover it is broken.
If The Athletic is really about reinventing sports journalism and overthrowing the tyranny of the daily sports page (instead of just biggering the bank accounts of the VC investors), where do young writers fit into this equation? Is there a spot for them at the number of sites?
On the morning of Valentine’s Day, the newsroom is relatively empty. Par for the course for 10:15 AM on a Wednesday. But Michael Ramirez, a sophomore sports editor who also covers the men’s soccer beat and writes the men’s basketball column, is at his desk sporting a jacket and tie. IU men’s basketball has a home game against Illinois at 8:30 PM, and he’ll be covering it.
It’s an idea a lot of us around sports media have had for a long time. ESPN, Fox Sports Network, and other cable sports networks use their nightly highlight shows not as a place for journalism but as a place to promote sports — especially the sports the network has a vested interested in succeeding. It’s one of the reasons, we assume, that you see tons of NBA talk on ESPN but rarely a mention of the NHL.
Like a lot of interesting research, Johnson and Miller’s study takes this assumption that we have and tries to figure out whether or not it’s true.
This is ESPN trying to have it both ways. It’s trying to add a kind-of ala carte service (which is interesting) but also maintain its connection to cable subscriptions. That’s no real surprise – as Galen said on that episode of The Flip Side, carriage fees are ESPN’s heroin. That $7 a month it gets from every cable bill is what built the network. It’s going to hold on to them and rely on them as long as possible.
The most important sports story of 2018 (so far) has been the Larry Nassar scandal.
In the wake of the revelations and the awe-inspiring bravery of his victims coming forward, it’s fair to question the media coverage of this story – or the lack thereof.
In 1967, pro football was in a rare space in the sports landscape.
The National Sports Journalism Center is pleased to announce a contributing partnership with Dr. Brian Moritz, a noted sports journalism scholar and writer.
