Keeping Score

Fall is in the air

Classes started today. The campus is bustling. There is always so much energy at the start of the fall semester. It sounds corny, but I always get a little buzz walking around campus these first few days -- of course this fades as student papers pile up, and the cold and snow move in :)

Anyway, the Sports Journalist's Association in the UK released a study/article on women sports journalists  - less than 10% of British sports journalists are women (this is similar to the U.S. where the number is around 13%

Keeping on the other side of the Atlantic, the London Observer has a piece on the pressure some women athletes face to dress "sexy" and more on the status of women athletes

Women covering sports

Penn State Prof. Marie Hardin wrote on her blog last Friday about the ASPE Study published in June - Hardin made note that the focus has been on the "white male" vs. minority male numbers in the sportsroom. But Hardin revisists the study and highlights the low numbers of women working in sports newsrooms. Yesterday, North Jersey.com follows with this piece.

Lesley Visser

The Boston Globe runs a profile of NFL reporter Lesley Visser (she worked early in her career at the Globe) - tomorrow she will be honored at the NFL Hall of Fame.

Sports newsrooms - not much diversity

A few media outlets wrote pieces on a study released last week by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at University of Central Florida that said most newspaper sports staffs are white and male. Here is a link to the actual report (PDF file)

Here's a few stats quoted from the report. APSE stands for Associated Press Sports Editors.

• White men and women comprised 88 percent of the total staffs of all APSE member newspapers; African-Americans held 6.2 percent, Latinos 3.6 percent, Asians 1.3 percent, and “other” people of color less than 1 percent.
• Women made up 12.6 percent of total staffs of APSE member newspapers.
• 94.7 percent of APSE sports editors were white while 90.0 percent were white males; African-Americans held only 1.6 percent; Latinos 2.8 percent and “others” less than 1 percent. There were no Asian sports editors.
• America’s sports columnists were 89.9 percent white.
• Women made up less than 7 percent of columnists at APSE member newspaper sports staff.
• Women and people of color combined to make up only 16.4 percent of columnists of the surveyed APSE member newspapers.

New sports editor

The San Jose Mercury News promoted Rachel Wettergreen Wilner to sports editor  - the first female in this position in the paper's history and she joins the small number of women who run major sports new departments nationwide.

Women sports journalists

The Center for Sports Journalism at Penn State conducted a survey of women who work in sports media  - most respondents said they were satisfied with their jobs despite working in "sometimes-hostile workplaces."  I was most interested in this part:

"The survey also asked respondents about coverage of women's sports. Although most believe coverage of women's sports is inadequate and that female athletes are stereotyped, many say they're not willing to lobby for better coverage. They also do not believe adding more women to newspaper sports departments or broadcasts will help women's sports get more exposure."

I wonder why they aren't willing to lobby? It could be not wanting to rock the boat - and maybe it's not the reporters job to rock the boat - this may lay more at the editor level.

One journalist who I think has lobbied for more coverage of one of her beats is Jayda Evans who covers the WNBA Seattle Storm for the Seattle Times (I think it also helps that she works for one of the only female sports editors of a top newspaper in the U.S.) Evans is one of the few WNBA beat reporters to travel to away games with her home team. Kim Callahan has a Q&A with Evans on Women's Basketball Online. Evans has a new book out on the team Game On! : How Women's Basketball Took Seattle by Storm.

USA Today's Brennan's book

Via Melissa Silverstein, who is working with Crhistine Brennan on the release of her new book ...

"Christine Brennan, the best-known and most widely read woman sports columnist in the United States, has written the first-ever father-daughter sports memoir by a sports journalist. Best Seat in the House: A Father, A Daughter, A Journey Through Sports, tells the heart-warming story of how one girl turned her love for sports into a trailblazing career, with the guidance and support of her strong and demanding father.  Brennan’s work appears regularly in USA Today and she is seen and heard on ABC News, ESPN, NPR and Fox Sports Radio.

"Her memoir is about a girl who grew up in Ohio playing sports with the boys on her block, going to games with her father and coming of age just as women's sports were coming of age in this country. Little did she and her father know that her journey through sports would take her from the playing fields of middle America into Super Bowl locker rooms and around the world to the Olympic Games, blazing a ground-breaking trail that has inspired many."

You can examine/buy the book here

Catching up ... on random stuff

I've been busy with the end of the semester approaching and haven't been able to post much the past week or two ...

The debate on what sports journalism should be and where the profession is going continued down at the Poynter Institute in Florida where they held a Sports Journalism Summit last week. Here is the event's blog and here is Jason Whitlock's  of the Kansas City Star take on the whole debate (he attended the Summit)

Today is the marathon here in Boston - I have it going on the TV in the background. I've been mulling over whether to start running again and shoot for running the Boston Marathon next year (for my 40th birthday - wow, it was hard to type that number). After 20 plus years of pounding the pavement, I stopped running three years ago. I was just tired of it, had had a baby, and wanted to focus on yoga and stretching my hamstrings for once. Running makes you fit, but it's an inflexible fit. But every once in a while, I really miss it and I miss running races. I think I need one last hurrah.

Award for Meyers-Drysdale

Ann Meyers-Drysdale, an ESPN analyst and former UCLA basketball star won the United States Sports Academy's Ronald Reagan Media Award - which honors work in sports journalism. Here's a piece from UCLA's Bruins site. She was the first woman to ever try out for an NBA team and the first woman drafted to the now defunct Women's Basketball League. Learning something new everyday - the award is named after Reagan because he was once a radio announcer for Chicago Cubs and U of Iowa football.

Hey ESPN

In his 2005 best and worst of the sports media, Richard Deitsch of Sports Illustrated makes a suggestion to ESPN's show "The Sports Reporters" ...

"Boston Globe columnist Jackie MacMullan recently was so eloquent and fiery on Outside the Lines regarding a segment on Penn State coach Rene Portland and the allegations from former players that she is anti-gay (Portland has denied the allegations) that it reinforced a suggestion I made a long time ago to ESPN's The Sports Reporters. Isn't it time a female sports reporter was made a permanent member of the panel? This isn't a knock on the long-tenured and well-coiffed law firm of Lupica, Ryan, Albom, Whitlock and Rhoden. Like The Love Boat's Ted Lange, we appreciate their service, even when Ryan's hyperbole reaches Mt. Everest proportions. But new voices are a good thing, and the pool of talented female sports reporters (MacMullan, Selena Roberts, Sally Jenkins, Michelle Voepel, Dana Jacobson, Liz Robbins, Lisa Salters etc..) would keep the chair filled till Stephen A. Smith took his last breath. Meaning a very long time."