Sports journalism

Sports journalism is a form of writing that reports on matters pertaining to sporting topics and competitions. Sports journalism started in the early 1800s when it was targeted to the social elite and transitioned into an integral part of the news business with newspapers having dedicated sports sections. The increased popularity of sports amongst the middle and lower class led to the more coverage of sports content in publications. The appetite for sports resulted in sports-only media such as '' Sports Illustrated'' and ESPN. There are many different forms of sports journalism, ranging from play-by-play and game recaps to analysis and investigative journalism on important developments in the sport. Technology and the internet age has massively changed the sports journalism space as it is struggling with the same problems that the broader category of print journalism is struggling with, mainly not being able to cover costs due to falling subscriptions. New forms of internet blogging and tweeting in the current millennium have pushed the boundaries of sports journalism.

Early history

Modern sports journalism finds its roots as content started to appear in newspapers in the early 1800s. At the start, the sports sporadically covered were horse racing and boxing. The focus of the coverage would be less on the event itself and more on the greater social context. Horse races between the North and South and boxing bouts between US and England garnered much interest from the social elite. In the early nineteenth century, popular British sportswriter Pierce Egan coined the term "the Sweet Science" as an epithet for prizefighting — or more fully "the Sweet Science of Bruising" as a description of England's bare-knuckle fight scene. During the 1820s and 1830s, the primary demographic target for newspapers was the social elite as newspaper was too expensive for the common man. Approaching the 20th century, several important changes occurred that lead to the increased saturation of sports journalism in the mainstream. The first was the advent of the penny press which allowed for cheaper and more tabloid style of newspaper production. Newspapers also began using advertising to pay for their production costs instead of relying on circulation.

20th century

The 1920s has been called the "Golden Age of American Sports". Baseball became the national pastime, college football became popular, and radio and newspaper coverage increased. The ''New York Herald'' was the first newspapers to publishing consistent sports coverage. The ''New York World'' in 1883 was the first newspaper to have a full times sports department. The following period from 1880 to 1920 saw a massive increase in sports coverage in publications. A study showed that in 1880 only 0.4 percent of space in the newspaper was dedicated to sports. By the 1920s, that proportion had risen to 20 percent. During this time, newspapers focused mainly on play by play coverage and game recaps of the sport events. Local publications started hiring beat reporters who were tasked with following all developments pertaining to the team. This included traveling with the team and interviewing the players. Teams also started constructing dedicated sections called press box in the stadiums for the press to sit and record notes on the game.

As technology introduced new developments like the radio, television and the internet, the focus of sports coverage shifted from the play by play to statistical analysis of the game and background pieces on the players. This was also coupled with a massive increase in sports amongst the general public. The increased popularity of football, basketball and hockey meant more content to publish and more interested readers to publish to. This led to the creation of journals like '' Sports Illustrated'', first published in 1954, was one of the first publications to solely focus on sports. ''Sports Illustrated'' was the brainchild of Henry Lucre who felt that the established publishers at the time were not taking advantage of the public's massive appetite for sports. With weekly issues, ''Sports Illustrated'' was able to produce more classic journalistic pieces as the writers had more time to research and conduct longer interview sit downs with players and coaches.

Digital age

Since the start of the new millennium, circulation and advertising numbers of print newspapers having been falling rapidly. This has led to widespread cost cutting and layoffs across the industry. There are 29 percent fewer journalist in the workforce now when compared to the number of journalist in 1980. These developments have significantly affected sports journalism as established publications like ''Sports Illustrated'' and ESPN have had to cut content, increase prices and reduce the number of publications which leads to more people unsubscribing from the content. The fall in print sports journalism can be tied to the rise of internet and digital sports journalism. Digital sports journalism serves as both a complement and a competitor of newspaper sports journalism. Digital sports journalism began in the mid 1990s with ESPN creating the first website in 1995. At first digital sports journalism covered broad topics in scope, but as time went on and the internet became more widespread, bloggers and location and team specific websites started taking over the market. A majority of these smaller websites did not charge a subscription fee as it was funded on advertising. This lower cost to the consumer as well as increased access to variety of very specific content led to the shift away from print and towards digital. However, the growth seen in the digital space which has increased advertising revenue has not balanced out the losses from print journalism. The importance of click count has gone up as these sites are being funded by online advertisers. This has led to many shorter journalistic pieces offering controversial opinions in order to generate the most clicks. Sportswriters regularly face more deadline pressure than other reporters because sporting events tend to occur late in the day and closer to the deadlines many organizations must observe. Yet they are expected to use the same tools as news journalists, and to uphold the same professional and ethical standards. They must take care not to show bias for any team. Twitter and other social media platforms became sports information providers. Twitter became a platform for sports in 2009 during the NBA playoffs. By the end of April, tweeting by television sports analysts, announcers, and journalists was the new trend in sports.

Socio-political significance

Sports stories occasionally transcend the games themselves and take on socio-political significance: Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in baseball is an example of this. Modern controversies regarding the hyper-compensation of top athletes, the use of anabolic steroids and other, banned performance-enhancing drugs, and the cost to local and national governments to build sports venues and related infrastructure, especially for Olympic Games, also demonstrates how sports can intrude on to the news pages.
Recently, the issue of Colin Kaepernick's protest of injustice shown to people of color by the police by kneeling during the performance of the national anthem before his football games has created diverse and varied coverage. His actions have taken his discussion from the sports field and into the national scope as major political pundits and even the Presidents commenting on the ethics of his actions. Kaepernick cites that his position as a quarterback in the National Football League gives him a unique opportunity to carry out his message. Kaepernick's actions have inspired a wave of athletes using their position to take on social issues ranging from abortion to college athletes getting monetary compensation. Sports journalism plays a significant role in how these views are conveyed to the public. The author creates a story from the raw quotes provided by the athlete and this is published to thousands of viewers. Inherent in the publication will be the biases of the author and this will be passed on to the reader (cite). As sports moves more and more into the political discussion space, sports journalist will have increasingly more power over the public sentiment of the hottest issues at the moment.

Future of sports journalism

There has been a major shift within sports in the last decade as more sports teams are switching to using analytics. A large reason for this shift is due to many articles being published about the increased benefit of using analytics to make strategic decisions in a game. As there is data collected about every instance in every sport, sports data analysis has increased. Sports publications are now hiring people with extensive background in statistics and mathematics in order to publish articles detailing the analysis these teams are conducting. New metrics have been created to study the quality of player performance. The metrics have also been used to compile rankings of players and teams. Blog sites like FiveThirtyEight began to sprout as full-time sport analytic sites that took available data and constructed analytic heavy articles pertaining to sports. ESPN has implemented a segment in their shows called ‘Sports Science’ where stars of every sport come in to test how advanced analytics affect field performance. There has been much pushback by many over the use of analytics in sports. Many established coaches are quick to bash analytics as narrow and ignorant of the big picture.

In Europe

The tradition of sports reporting attracting some of the finest writers in journalism can be traced to the coverage of sport in Victorian England, where several modern sports – such as association football, cricket, athletics and rugby – were first organized and codified into something resembling what we would recognize today.

Andrew Warwick has suggested that The Boat Race provided the first mass spectator event for journalistic coverage. The Race, an annual rowing event between the University of Cambridge and University of Oxford, has been held annually from 1856.

Cricket, possibly because of its esteemed place in society, has regularly attracted the most elegant of writers. The '' Manchester Guardian'', in the first half of the 20th century, employed Neville Cardus as its cricket correspondent as well as its music critic. Cardus was later knighted for his services to journalism. One of his successors, John Arlott, who became a worldwide favorite because of his radio commentaries on the BBC
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