Making soufflé with metal: Effects of the coronavirus pandemic on sports journalism practices

Abstract

The coronavirus pandemic significantly – and perhaps permanently – altered the ways by which we lead our personal and professional lives. Sports journalism is no exception – with the seasons of all kinds of sports modified, reduced or cancelled entirely in 2020, reporters on the sports beat had to quickly adapt to ever-changing circumstances. This exploratory study investigates the impact of the pandemic on the practices of sports beat writers during the 2020 season. Through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 12 beat writers covering teams in all four major North American sports leagues, this study reveals that the journalists’ experiences with the pandemic-imposed conditions underscored already-present trends within sports journalism: namely, a reduction of access to players and coaching due, in part, to increased team control through robust media relations divisions; journalists’ overreliance on official team sources; and a move towards feature and data- and analytics-driven stories. This study contributes to literature on sports journalism beat reporting and offers an early insight into how the pandemic conditions might help shape the future of the industry.

“Part of the Team”: In-House Sports Reporters Navigating the Journalistic Periphery

“…This double-natured periphery can be extended to sports journalism as well, another subfield of journalism residing outside of the hard-news core. Within the contemporary sports/media complex, both digital sports journalists and in-house team media produce news content related to specific sports beats or teams (Nölleke and Perreault 2023;Velloso 2022). However, despite similarities in function between in-house reporters and sports journalists, in-house reporters have been portrayed as a threat to the boundaries of traditional sports journalism and the professional access of sports journalists (Mirer 2022;Nölleke and Perreault 2023).…”

Prekarierinnen? Geschlechterspezifische Unterschiede prekärer Arbeit im Journalismus

“…Für freie Journalisten in der Rolle des Familienernährers kann daraus in Krisenzeiten Druck entstehen (Motakef 2015). Künftige Studien müssen klären, ob das Geschlecht das diskriminierende Merkmal ist oder die Krisenanfälligkeit von Themengebieten wie Sportjournalismus, für die eher Journalisten tätig sind (Schaffrath 2020;Velloso 2022).…”

Rethinking Sports Journalism

“…In return, they grant media actors access to athletes, teams, and events, which enables sports journalists to produce content with mass appeal and thereby strengthen their position in the newsroom. Ultimately, the legitimacy of sports reporting has long been based on its close relationship with sports protagonists (Velloso 2022). And the privilege of access has long served as a boundary marker distinguishing professional sports journalism from other actors such as (amateur) bloggers (Mirer 2022).…”