Women in Sports Journalism

Hayley Lewis

hl646911@ohio.edu

Diversity in the media has proved itself to be both dormant and unchanging over the last two decades with Caucasian reporters representing over 80% of the average newsroom. With various reporter stereotypes associated with each type of news, it becomes difficult for minorities to break into varying fields within journalism to make an impact and turn these numbers around.

Women face an uphill battle when it comes to sports journalism. Although they are continuously making strides into the field they are still faced with colleagues who are overwhelmingly male, automatically making them a target of a variety of scrutiny from knowledge of the game, to most importantly, appearance.

An audience that is primarily male automatically, and often loudly, judges many women who bravely delve in to the world of sports journalism based on their appearance. The resulting notoriety of the more attractive female reporters often overshadows their hard work and professionalism and completely overrides any of their statements or insight into the game they are covering.

Jenny Dell, a former Red Sox correspondent and now NFL sideline reporter, gained a massive following in Boston and the surrounding New England area after she covered the Sox’ world champions run in 2013. This cult-like following however was based primarily upon the reporters looks and often completely ignored the job she was doing.

Photo: Jim Davis / The Boston Globe via Getty Images

She is not alone. With lists such as “The 20 Sexiest SportsReporters of 2012” females on sports networks cannot escape the scrutiny, no matter how good their reporting or game analysis is, and most likely will not until diversity is increased across the media as a whole.

The subjective judgment of women sports journalists is by no means encouraging for young women and girls who aspire to be just that, particularly in a society where women are constantly scrutinized based on appearance rather than their knowledge of a subject or their abilities and talents within their career.

In order for the minority problem to be fixed in the media, speculations against women and other minorities based on appearance or race have to be reduced. This proves more difficult however when minority numbers are not increasing due primarily to the lasting effects of the financial crisis and the higher likelihood of a minority taking a buy-out deal due to their lack of seniority in the newsroom. A fact that is proving difficult to overcome, but one which a solution to would most likely fix media-public relations and produce greater trust in the media as an accurate reflection of American society.