How sports journalism balances access and honesty

Sports journalism is writing that reports on sporting topics and competitions, from play by play and game recaps to analysis and investigations of important developments. These lessons answer how sportswriters can balance access to teams and subjects with honest reporting. They consider the pressures and relationships that shape sports coverage.

2 articles, 1 book · about 32 min of reading and viewing

The reading path

1. Read
   

   sports journalism · Wikipedia · 20 min read

   Sports journalism's long-term investigative projects have often come from television documentary makers. The sensitive relationships between sports journalists and their subjects, and declining budgets at most Fleet Street newspapers, have contributed to this. In sports journalism, female reporters were not allowed to enter locker rooms for interviews until 1978. Sports Illustrated reporter Melissa Ludtke sued the New York Yankees after being barred from interviewing players in the locker room during the 1977 World Series, and a federal judge ruled the ban violated the Equal Protection Clause in the 14th Amendment. Online advertisers fund these sites, and the importance of click count has gone up. This has led to many shorter journalistic pieces offering controversial opinions in order to generate the most clicks.

2. Read
   

   A Short History of Sportswriting (from Bat Masterson to Shams Charania) · Fair Observer · 12 min read

   Most sportswriters got travel and meal money from the teams or event promoters they covered, and an honest reportorial job could be considered an ungrateful act to be punished with loss of access and cash. "We were all supposed to be on the same team." Sports journalism once put reporters and teams in a shared "sweaty Eden": Yankees Manager Ralph Houk asked a reporter covering the Yankees in the 1960s whether he would be "a booster or a ripper," then said, "We're all in this together." Family squabbles, drunkenness or screwing around had, in the past, rarely been reported.

3. Book
   

   The Sportswriter · Bookshop.org

   The Sportswriter by Richard Ford portrays failed novelist Frank Bascombe turned sportswriter, placing sports journalism in the story of his protagonist.

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