Basically, I've been on hiatus from this blog most of the semester - working on book, busy with classes and also expecting a baby in the next week or so. So now I'll make it an official hiatus as I'm about to go on leave. Hope to be back early next year, when things get back into a more regular routine!
An interesting profile in New York Times sports today on a 51-year-old Swedish woman who went from a life as a marketing executive to a life as a competing amateur body builder.
The New York Times has an Associated Press profile of the Women’s Professional Football League
So fall semester has started. I've been on hiatus from the blog most of the summer - I've been writing my book and it took most of my time and attention this summer. Plus I'm expecting a baby in November, and that made getting the book done even more important. It's not done, but I'm getting there. But now that I'm back teaching, I'm also hoping to get back to the blog until the bambino arrives.
I'm not sure if that is the best slogan to promote the U.S. Women's Soccer team (the slogan appears on their Website). They're playing right now in China for the FIFA World Cup and there has been some sports press on why this team isn't getting the attention it deserves. George Vecsey at the New York Times weighs in here, Christine Brennan of USAToday argues that FIFA made a huge mistake in scheduling the event in September, one of the busiest sports months (meaning men's sports months) of the year. As Brennan notes in her piece "Only seven U.S. media outlets are heading to China to cover the event" The Associated Press also wrote about the lack of interest in the team. And Sports Illustrated looked at why women's athletes get no respect. None of these pieces (except for Brennan, who touches upon it) talks about the sports media own role in the lack of attention on women athletes/sports. It's the question I've been pondering the past few years - which comes first - sports coverage of a sport or fan interest of a sport, and how much interest is enough interest to drive sports coverage?
An article on Forbes.com about female college coaches - the focus of the piece is a lawsuit by a former women's volleyball coach at Fresno State who was fired and replaced by a male coach.
In another post, I was talking about sports bloggers getting press credentials to sporting events. The latest twist on this, is an "official" sports reporter who was blogging from a college baseball game and was ejected from the press box for doing so. The N.C.A.A. said it did this because it doesn't want reporters blogging about game action - however, reporters "may blog about the atmosphere, crowd and other details during a game." Now The Courier-Journal of Louisville, Ky is thinking of suing the N.C.A.A. This will be an interesting case - there are lots of elements to it - the biggest one is television contracts and who has the right to report live game action. And you can read much more on this over at Sports Law Blog here and here
According to Olympic medalist Amanda Beard, the time was now as she explains to ESPN's Sage Steele on a video you can watch from Gene Wojciechowski's column . Wojciechowski also weighs in on Beard's decision to show all in Playboy. So what to make of all this? Is it empowering to women? Or just sad that a woman athlete has to strip down to earn some $$ because the sport she competes in can't support her financially? It's hard to listen to her tell Steele that she feels she is doing a good thing because she is showing how a body can be health and athletic. But who is looking at this naked healthy body? Beard needs to be a bit realistic about the context of Playboy. It is what it is - don't try to cloak it as something it isn't. Most of the readers are not going to have any epiphanies about the female shape or women athletes as they flip through the pages before she's tossed into the recycling bin.
I check out Poynter.org daily - mainly for Romenesko's media page. Today I saw a piece about blogs that cover certain sports in detail - usually sports that are ignored by the mainstream press. The example he gives is local cycling. Sometimes I think this is the future for coverage of women's sports - just look at all the blogs and message boards devoted to women's basketball where fans congregate for news, gossip, etc. These sites fill a hole out there - while the national press may cover or air a WNBA game here or there or a college game - they are usually straight game stories - for the most part, there is a dearth of feature reporting and commentary/opinion writing on the sport. Granted many of these sites rely on mainstream sports reporting for the basic news - they cobble together what's out there and expand it.
There was also another piece on the Poynter site about bloggers getting press credentials - the focus of the piece is the NHL - some teams are welcoming the additional coverage and issuing media passes to bloggers, others are not. As the writer Steve Klein argues, "For a professional sport that often has to go begging for coverage, blogs should be a godsend."
The Salt Lake Tribune ran a profile on Lisa Mitzel, a former All-American gymnast, who has started the nonprofit organization called Athletic Girl Productions.
According to the article, "Izzi says her main initiative is to increase exposure for
positive female role models in sports through media channels including
the Web site and TV. She is gathering funds and packaging together a
cable TV show highlighting women in sports."
Her motivation came from some thesis research where she realized the dearth of women athletes on TV and decided to try to do something about it.
