Sports Journalism Has Grown Up

By: Randy Dotinga When sports editors gather for their annual convention next week in Dallas, the main topics will be very familiar -- the Jayson Blair affair, diversity in the newsroom, journalistic ethics, and the hazards of over-covering a story.

If it sounds like a meeting of the Society of Professional Journalists, that's precisely the point. At many newspapers, sports has shed its reputation as a "toy department" full of white males who only care about carting home freebies and kissing up to their favorite athletes.

"As sports journalism has evolved, it's become much more of a profession," said John Cherwa, sports coordinator for Tribune Co. newspapers and president of Associated Press Sports Editors. "We've really grown up over the last 20 years."

Here's a look at a couple of the major topics on tap at the APSE convention:

* Diversity: According to the latest estimate, fewer than 13 percent of staffers at American newspapers are minorities. No one seems to track the number of minorities in sports departments, but editors acknowledge that their aren't many of them. "We do have problems of diversity, but we're working on them," Cherwa said.

Indeed, Latino sports reporters will hold a seminar at the Dallas convention, and the APSE will celebrate 10 years of the Sports Journalism Institute, a program that encourages minorities to become sports journalists.

But efforts to recruit minorities are hampered by the lack of turnover in sports departments, editors said. "Unless you have entry-level positions which are dedicated to bringing in new staffers, whoever they may be, you have limited opportunities," said Julie Ward, deputy managing sports editor at USA Today.

Sports editors said the lack of turnover creates another problem -- a shortage of young people on staff. USA Today, for example, has plenty of staffers who joined the paper when it was born two decades ago but not enough non-Baby Boomers, Ward said.

Young applicants, therefore are in high demand. "When we look to recruit, we certainly are looking with an eye to the future," she said.

Newspapers like USA Today are also looking to bring in more women. According to an APSE survey, only 2.6% of sports employees at newspapers with under 50,000 circulation are women. The number grows to 18.9% for newspapers with circulations of more than 175,000.

Men, of course, have always dominated sports, both on the field and in the press box. Women may be turned off by the night hours of sports writing, Ward said, adding that newspapers don't always provide women with opportunities to advance and challenge themselves.

Judging by APSE 2002 writing contest results, however, many women in sports departments seem be doing just fine. Women took several top honors, including three of the five awards for enterprise reporting at newspapers with circulations from 100,000-250,000.

"The women we are attracting are really good, and they're in it because they have a passion," said Bill Eichenberger, deputy sports editor at Newsday in Melville, N.Y.

* Credibility: Do readers believe what they read in sports sections? The mess at The New York Times has made some editors wonder, and they'll discuss how to avoid disaster at the convention. "Anyone who says this couldn't happen to them is mistaken," Cherwa said. "Undoubtedly, it happens more frequently than we'd like to think."

On the other hand, sports departments may actually be immune to one of the plagues uncovered by the Jayson Blair affair -- readers and sources who don't bother to call in to correct errors. Sports departments face the other extreme: their readers won't shut up.

"I can't imagine us getting things wrong, and it not being noticed by our readers," Eichenberger said. "People take it personally when you get a statistic wrong or get the sequence of hits wrong when describing a rally. It keeps us honest."

But sports writers still face plenty of ethical dilemmas, and new competition from television and the Internet is raising the stakes. Web sites in particular put pressure on sports writers by going after big stories without always worrying about ethical standards, said Doug Roberson, sports news gathering editor at the Daily Press in Newport News, Va. "They're writing speculation with no sources, and when you're trying to track the information down you want to do so in a credible way."

Credibility has a lot to do with perception, and sports departments still carry around some baggage on that front. For one, there's the matter of sports writers who aren't much different from fans. "It's not unheard of to have sports reporters in press boxes openly rooting for teams," Cherwa said. "I think that's wrong."

Sports departments also suffer from an image problem that goes back to the old days -- just a decade or two ago -- when there weren't many rules about free gifts. Sports teams used to routinely bribe reporters with "schwag" -- turkeys at Christmas, televisions, cases of liquor, and more.

Things are different now. Writers at the Contra Costa Times in Walnut Creek, Calif., won't even go on a charter plane with a team unless the newspaper gets to pay for the seats, said Sports Editor Jerry Micco, who detests the greedy gravy-train philosophy behind the old "toy department" moniker.

"I don't write about toys, I don't cover Mattel," he said. "I do sports."

In the sports departments of the 21st century, he's got plenty of company.