The change nature of sportswriting

Abstract

Like almost everything else in American society, the world of big time spectator sports has changed dramatically over the past 70 years. Once it seemed that the public perception of the popular athlete was that of the mythic hero through whom the fan could vicariously enjoy the pure thrills of competition. Now it often seems that sports offer only a reflection of society's ills rather than an escape from them. Even over the last 25 years, many fans have come to feel that the sports pages are now dominated by topics that are related to sports in only a peripheral way. To some it seems that the main subjects are money (player contracts, disputes, holdouts), business (franchise shifts, new and competing leagues, television contracts, salary caps) and crime (player drug arrests), while stories celebrating athletic skills, grace and the sheer joy of the games themselves are outweighed and outnumbered. As a longtime sports fan and, since 1983, a part-time, free-lance sports writer and sportscaster for the Associated Press, United Press International, ABC Radio and others, this writer had at times shared this perception, and wondered if it merely reflected a feeling of disenchantment or if it was based on fact. The following excerpts from a column by David Shaw that first appeared in the June 3, 1989 edition of the Los Angeles Times, gave some examples of what might be a modern trend.

pril was a special month, even for sports-crazy Chicago. The basketball Bulls were in the playoffs. So were the hockey Black Hawks. And the Cubs and White Sox were just starting the major league baseball season, both filled with the perennial optimism that is as much a part of springtime in America as blossoming flowers, adolescent love and daylight savings. But the sports story that stretched across the top of Page 1 of the Chicago Tribune on April 13 wasn't about balls and strikes or pucks and rebounds. It was about financial problems in the athletic program at the University of Illinois. The next day, another sports story appeared atop Page 1 of the Tribune, this one reporting the conviction of two agents for racketeering and mail fraud; the agents had offered college football players thousands of dollars to sign illegal contracts before they graduated, then threatened those who tried to break the contracts. A day later, yet another sports story appeared on Page 1, this one disclosing that contractors' bids to build a new stadium for the White Sox were $30 million higher than earlier estimates. What's happening in Chicago? Pretty much what's happening elsewhere these days. Strikes. Lawsuits. Drugs. Gambling. Racketeering. Recruiting scandals. Sex scandals. Soviet defections. Run-ins with the police, the FBI and the IRS. Multimillion-dollar player contracts. Billion-dollar television deals. Almost every day, it seems, there's a new and important sports story outside the white lines of the playing field. Clearly, big-time sports is increasingly moving from the sports page to the front page--and to the business, entertainment and life style pages as well. Sports has become a big business in a skeptical, celebrity-conscious age, and many newspaper editors, long accustomed to thiIL􀀞ing of sports as the toy department of joumalisrn--a veritable sandbox of scores and statistics--are struggling to figure out how to cover this change. F.ditors elsewhere report a similar syndrome. The Washington Post, its pages filled with news of the new Bush Administration and controversies over Mayor Marion S. Barry and then House Speaker Jim Wright, has published 15 non-game sports stories on Page 1 already this year, including one on unsafe conditions in local high school sports facilities, equipment and medical procedures. The Louisville Courier Journal's lead Page 1 story twice in three days in April involved an investigation of alleged irregularities in the basketball program at the University of Kentucky.

The Atlanta Constitution, that same month, devoted virtually the entire top half of its front page to stories and photographs reporting charges that basketball star Dominique Wilkins and his mother had received almost $30,000 in secret payments from a sports agent when Wilkins had played for the University of Georgia. This brief list, all from a single month, doesn't include stories on the personal travails of four big-name baseball stars that dominated the sports pages and, sometimes, the front pages of the nation's newspapers throughout the spring--stories on Pete Rose and his gambling, Steve Garvey and his paternity suits, Wade Boggs and his mistress, Jose Canseco and his driving and firearms problems. (p. 35-36)

This example would seem to indicate, that in the modern era, sports stories of a non-event or even controversial nature have actually pushed aside or superseded more traditional event-oriented sports stories. But there was also the possibility, according to Shaw, that the relentlessly positive picture presented in the sports pages of yesteryear might have been a function of antiquated writing styles and poor reporting techniques.

ports pages were long filled with prose that Leonard Schecter, in his book "The Jocks," called "consistently bland and hero worshipful ... pedestrian, cliche-ridden." Many sportswriters were "so droolingly grateful for the opportunity to make their living as non-paying fans at sporting events that they devoted much of their energy to stepping on no toes," Schecter wrote. (p. 36) In his article, "Sports News, a Plea for Perspective: Why is Sportswriting the Way It Is?," Herb Strentz agreed with Schecter, and even argued that, relative to news journalism, sportswriting still suffers from some of the same faults.

... the reporting of sports news still seems so mired in cliches, so distressingly superficial and so prone to hyperbole that some discussion is merited as to how sports news came to be the way that it is. (no citation available)

Strentz went on to say that these tendencies were fed by what he listed as "the optimistic nature of much of sports news, a built-in emphasis on the positive in sportswriting, the inherent symbolism in sports and lack of criticism of sports news." Obviously subjective analyses by some observers supported the idea that at one time sportswriters presented their product in a simpler, more positive manner, with some of these same observers adding that the modern era has brought an increased emphasis on controversy, business and personal difficulties in newspaper sports reporting. The question then arose as to whether this perceived change had ever been confirmed or disproved by the use of content analysis. A consultation with Dr. Richard Crepeau, a noted sports historian at the University of Central Florida, turned up no evidence of any quantitative analyses along these lines in the field of sports writing. A subsequent check of all dissertation abstracts dating back to 1961 failed to turn up any content analyses that dealt Jvith the changing nature of sportswriting, and only a handful that addressed the subject of sportswriting at all. Without exception, those that used statistical analysis were confined to a single era or dealt with unrelated topics. In addition, a survey of periodical abstracts dating back to 1971 (going back further would have robbed the study of any year rec

enough to represent the modern era for comparative analysis) did not produce any comparative statistical analysis of developing trends in sportswriting. Again the search yielded scant evidence of any statistical research on sportswriting at all, and what little there was addressed subjects related to this topic in only a tangential way, hence the justification for the current study. Selection of Newspapers as Vehicle for Study The span of time to be covered in this research was from 1923 to 1986. Thus, it was necessary to limit the study to newspapers since they are the only medium that has covered sports thoroughly for the duration of that period. Television was practically unheard of in 1923, a mere gleam in the eye of an emerging science, while radio, though popular, was still in its infancy. Purpose and Research Questions The purpose of this study was to compare and analyze the substance, style and focus of newspaper sportswriting from four different eras, 1923, 1932, 1952, and 1986. The relative amount of hero worship in sports reporting, attention to the details of the sports themselves, the inclination to delve into the private character of the athletes and the amount of space devoted to the financial and business aspects of the sports world were examined by this study. The analysis of the material gathered from the different time periods was guided by the following research questions. RQl Are there more stories which emphasize personal references to athletes in later years than in earlier years? RQ2 as there a greater tendency in earlier years than in later years to describe athletes with laudatory, even hero worshipful phrases and adjectives? RQ3 Conversely, within the framework of personal stories, is there now a greater tendency to describe athletes with negative phrases and adjectives regarding their on and off field activities? RQ4 .Are there fewer event-oriented stories in later years than in earlier years? RQS Within the framework of event-oriented stories, was there a greater amount of description and detail in the early years than in the later years? RQ6 Is there now a greater emphasis on reporting the financial aspects of sports news?

Notes

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Graduation Date

1991

Semester

Fall

Advisor

Pryor, Burt

Degree

Master of Arts (M.A.)

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Communication

Format

PDF

Pages

45 p.

Language

English

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Masters Thesis (Open Access)

Identifier

DP0029071

Subjects

Arts and Sciences -- Dissertations, Academic; Dissertations, Academic -- Arts and Sciences

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