So where is the journalism in sports journalism? Where is the hardheaded, probing coverage of these mega-institutions that one sees in politics, business, and academia? Where is the solid, substantive reporting that can actually shed light on the quasi-informed gossip and speculation that fills up endless hours of chatter on WEEI and the TV sports talk shows?
Not surprisingly, Fainaru-Wada is among those advocating for more serious sports coverage.
“No one’s letting me run a newspaper,” he admits. But more aggressive sports reporting “seems like a natural thing you would do. This is a big business and [it is] rife with stories to be done ... If you look at a sports section every day, 99 percent of the reporting is positive. It’s a complete diversionary thing to talk about how negative the media are about sports.”
Sandy Padwe, a former Sports Illustrated senior editor and an ESPN consultant who teaches at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, also believes that better reporting could have smoked out the steroids scandal earlier.
“There was all this stuff out there to be looked at, but there are few investigative units in sports,” he says. “That’s the big frustration. It won’t be until sports departments function independently journalistically that you’ll lift sports departments up to the level of everyone else.”
The Wide World of Sports
These days, it’s pretty obvious that sports presents subjects and conflicts that merit substantive media scrutiny.
“Clearly, we can find many issues in sports that can be called front-page and metro related,” ventures Bob Steele, an ethics expert at the Poynter Institute media think tank. “There’s a great deal of business and economic conditions. Sports are often about race and race relations.... Sports may be as central in our society as politics and religion.” (Later this month, Poynter will host a “Sports Journalism Summit” in conjunction with the Associated Press Sports Editors (APSE).)
Boston — along with the other northeastern megalopolises of New York and Philadelphia — has long had a reputation of hosting an aggressive and relentless sports press corps that can be too intense for the player or coach who can’t handle the pressure cooker. And that’s certainly true for extensive on-the-field coverage and sharply opinionated column writing.
But there are also stories simmering in the back of the clubhouse, away from public view.
The furor last fall surrounding Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein’s sudden (and temporary) departure from the team triggered an intensively competitive media war to try to make sense of that turn of events. And in that context, the 17 percent stake in the Sox owned by Globe parent the New York Times Co. proved to be an extremely contentious subject.
(There are a number of media companies and moguls, ranging from the New York Times Co. to the Tribune Co. and from Rupert Murdoch to Ted Turner, that have held ownership stakes in professional-sports franchises — a reality that complicates coverage issues even more.)
