Keeping Score

Comets coverage in the Houston Chronicle

James Cambell writes the About:Chron blog for the Houston Chronicle, addressing readers' concerns and questions about Chronicle coverage. The other day he addressed complaints from readers over lack of coverage of Houston's WNBA team, the Comets- "Do Comets and women's sports ride second-class in the Chronicle? " (he links to this blog at the end of his post). Well worth a look. Cambell reprints some readers letters as well as quotes from sports editors explaining how they decide what goes in the sports pages. Also read the comments posted in reaction to this posting - it kicked off a good debate.

A question I've been hoping to address in my research is what is the relationship between media coverage of a sport and the popularity of the sport? In Cambell's posting, I saw this addressed by a few people. One commenter wrote to Cambell ...

"You've made a somewhat circular argument to excuse the lack of Comets' coverage or its burial within the pages of the Sports section. If you provided more positive coverage - the example about the recent game against Sacramento would have been a great opportunity to do just that - there might be more fans in the stands and more interest out there on the street. Instead you focus on perceived conflicts among teammates.
The story on Tari Phillips was excellent, but it focused more on the personal angle than on her basketball accomplishments - a great "soft" lifestyle piece, but not true sports reporting." (Posted by: Vicki Hustede  at July 26, 2005 11:37 PM)"

Another wrote ...

"If the interest in the WNBA picks up enough to warrant Rockets-caliber coverage, the Chronicle will supply it. For now, that interest simply does not exist. Nor do I expect it to materialize. A couple weeks ago I went downtown to see the Comets lose a squeaker to New York. It was a pretty good game, as far as airball-laden basketball goes. My seat was excellent, maybe eight rows from the floor. My very good ticket cost five bucks, and Fewer than 7,000 people showed up." Posted by: Matt Bramanti  at July 27, 2005 03:17 AM

This, to me, is the Catch-22. Which should come first - more media coverage, which may generate more fans and interest or more fans and interest, which may generate more media coverage? What is the sports media responsibility, if any, in the success or failure of a professional league?

"Danica Mania"

ESPN's John Oreovicz had a great column yesterday "Andretti Green drivers are right, but too bad" about the latest sports media flurry over female race car driver Danica Patrick. A group of male drivers refused to sign autographs at an official session to protest the extra attention Patrick is receiving from the Indy Racing League, media, fans, etc. Oreovicz makes some nice points in the piece ... basically that yes, it's unfair and according to Oresovicz,  "it's got to be galling for a guy like Sam Hornish Jr., who scored his record 14th IndyCar Series race win at Milwaukee, to walk into an autograph session and see signs directing fans one way for Danica Patrick and the other way for "All Other Drivers."

But Oreovicz believes the male drivers just need to suck it up and doesn't want people to blame Patrick.

"The person I feel sorry for the most in all of this nonsense is Danica herself. She's handled herself with dignity and class throughout Danica Mania. When you get down to it, she's a 23-year-old girl working in an unusual profession who didn't ask to be thrust into such a harsh and glaring spotlight. Remember, this is a girl who set out to make the pages of Racer magazine, not People magazine. Those of us who have followed her career for years already know she's a good race-car driver. Now she's proving to be a damn fine celebrity as well.

But that's a double-edged sword, because to maintain her celebrity cachet, she's going to have to start winning races at some point and develop into a great race-car driver. And that's more difficult than it looks; it took the average IndyCar driver 33 races to reach victory circle, which for Danica, would be near the end of the 2006 season. Can the mainstream media maintain interest for that long?" (Oreovicz, 7/26/05, ESPN.com)

I think he addresses nicely one of the problems when a woman starts to break ground in a male-dominated sport. There is tremendous pressure coming from all angles. On the one hand, you want her accomplishments to be noticed and respected; you don't want the media to ignore this person. Sports coverage, in particular, always has a soft spot for the stars, the latest and greatest, the record breakers (look at the Lance coverage - think of what autograph signings are like at bike racers and who is in most demand),  On the other hand, you want a woman athlete to be treated as all the other male athletes in her sport. The special focus/attention can make her seem like a freak of nature or a one-time thing or an attention-getting stunt, etc. Some members of the sports media need to stop being freaked out    - "oh my, she can really throw!" and just give the athlete her fair and balanced coverage.

 

 

 

U.S. women's soccer on a role ...

The L.A. Daily News reviews the new make-up of the U.S. women's soccer team.
New generation leads U.S. women(7/25/05). Yesterday they beat Iceland 3-0. I've noticed that the team gets decent coverage in California media outlets.

Up close and personal ...

On their Website today the LATimes sports section flags their volleyball photo gallery of the Hermosa Beach Open with this photo of Kerri Walsh's butt. She is one of, if not the, top player in the world. (Photo by Brendan McDermid / EPA). Hmmm... nice pic for a calender maybe - there's better action shots of Walsh and other top players in the gallery. Here is the LA Times coverage of the event - "Top Team Tightens Its Grip."

The Mass Mutiny

Speaking of the National Women's Football League (see post below this one) - Camille Dodero from the Boston Phoenix (I used to work there with Camille) recently wrote a great piece about our Mass. local women's franchise - "Real girls play tackle:The Mass Mutiny, JP’s full-contact women’s pro-football team, pulls no punches"   Camille's writing takes you right into the nitty gritty of this team who pour all their passion and hard work into a sport they love.

New radio program for women's sports

Catherine Masters, the founder of the National Women's Football Association, is hosting a new sports radio program -- Chic Sports Radio -- devoted to women's sports. The program started in early April and is based in Nashville, TN. It is broadcast on Friday nights from 7-8 p.m. on the Byline USA Radio Network, which has affiliates in 42 states and on Sirius satellite radio. Plus you can listen to their shows anytime on their Website. They cover a wide range of sports - golf, tennis, pool, women's football, etc. This Friday they will be interviewing a rep. from USABoxing about women's boxing- I'm sure they will talk about the upcoming fight between Anne Wolfe and James Johnson. Here is an article from the Tennessean about Masters' new show.

I'm updating a study in the dog days of summer...

One of my projects for this summer and upcoming school year is updating a study that examined the sports sections of four newsapapers. The original study "Coverage of Women's Sports in Four Daily Newspapers" was done in 1990 and sponsored by the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles. I thought it would be interesting to look again at the same four newspapers 15 years later. The newspapers are USAToday, Dallas Morning News, Orange County Register, and my hometown paper - the Boston Globe. These were the choices of the original study based on the Associated Press top sports section list they put out each year. I'm replicating the original study, but also expanding it a bit - to isolate golf and tennis stories - since both men and women are playing professionally during the timeframe of the study (July 1  - Sept. 30). Also, there was no WNBA in 1990, so I'm going to include some numbers on this also.

The papers are piling up in my house (too quickly!) and I'm starting to wade through them. So far, I've tackled USAToday and the Globe. My intital impression is that you can see the effort USAToday makes to cover women's sports. The Globe is another story - but it's also a regional paper, we're in the thick of Red Sox mania here (which gets most of the ink), but women's sports coverage seems lacking. But I'll reserve conclusions until all the evidence is in. A few months back, the Globe finally did get rid of a section that they devoted soley to women sports - buried in the sports section on Wed. I wrote them an angry letter about it when they first launched it eight or so years ago. To me, you should just cover women's sports - don't give these athletes a special page one day a week and shove it all in there. They made a similar insulting move when they would publish Sox coverage in Spanish only for games when Pedro Martinez pitched. There were good intentions behind these moves, but that still doesn't mean they're right.

Girls and sneakers ...

Steve from She'sgotgame sent me a link to an article from The State news Website (a newspaper in Columbia, S.C.) about how big shoe (i.e., sneakers!) companies are starting to make inroads to girls high school basketball. Not everyone will like this development, but $$$ are what drive professional sports, starting at the amateur level.

NYTimes responds to lack of WNBA coverage

Women's Hoops blog urged Liberty fans to contact NYTimes about their lack of coverage of the team. Well, it worked. Here is their post from yesterday ...

"Good news this afternoon from Kristin Huckshorn, deputy sports editor at the New York Times, as she responds to reader mail: "You are right, we fell down on the job on the Liberty of late. Last week we were really jammed with other major events. The Liberty is on the road this week and we'll use wires and then have someone back with them after that. Sometimes letter-writing campaigns do help. When Lena Williams (or whoever it is) comes back, tell the NYT you're glad to see her. And consider thanking the Seattle Times for not only covering the Storm pretty well, but sending their Storm reporter, Jayda Evans, to away games. Newspapers put resources where they believe readers want them: if we want better coverage for our league, we ought to let newspapers know." (posted by Jessie & Steve at 12:48 PM July 18, 2005, womenshoop.blogspot.com)

The Wie stories keep coming ...

I took a few days off and spent a long weekend at my parents in Maine. Rather than writing about sports on this blog, I was a sports fan. Watched the British Open with my Dad and we took my 2 1/2 year old to her first baseball game - the Portland Seadogs - the double A team of the Red Sox. A good time. Now it's time to catch up on the blog.

Sports writers are finding all kinds of topics to touch on as teenage golfer Michelle Wie continues to compete in men's tournaments.

"Where the Boys Are. There She Is." - NYTimes' Selena Roberts on why Wie could hurt the LPGA

"A Teenage Golfer May Also Be a Marketer's Dream"  - another NYTimes piece by Louise Story

"Face it: Wie can really play"  - Newsday columnist Johnette Howard. Here's an excerpt, which makes some good points ...

• "For nearly a week, Wie again defied the skeptics and self-appointed guardians of the game who have said she's all hype and she doesn't belong in men's tournaments, she's no better than some other female teenagers, she's just a publicity stunt.
  
  Don't listen to any of that.
  
  When the tradition-shackled alarmists and stuffed shirts complain that Wie is pursuing her golf career in a way no one before her ever has, they miss the point.
  
  Wie should behave differently. There has never been a young female golfer as good as her. Her unprecedented talent demands the unusual path she's taking. If she were a piano prodigy, no one would gripe she was trying to play Rachmaninoff instead of something less challenging." (Newsday, 7/17/05)