The Organizational Structure of Sports Journalism, Everyday Life and the Job of Sports Journalists - Research Paper Example

?Introduction If we talk about sport, we should recognize that it is as old as human existence. Since ancient time sport has played a very important role in every society. The history of sport has its roots in primitive society, when people unconsciously created many kinds of sport while trying to master the world around. Sports skills are the first humans acquired as they were necessary and useful for them. Sports events were popular in Ancient Greece, the first Olympic Games were held in Olympia in 776 BC and included such kinds of sport as discus throw, wrestling, long jump and many other (Guttmann, 1996). The history of sport can’t be considered separately from the history of sports journalism that started already in 850 BC when Homer wrote about the victory of Ajax and Odysseus. Homer’s poetry is already considered to be the first sports journalism, notwithstanding that the real development of it began in 1800s when many sport events were fixed in written form. After the Olympics was held in 1908, the job of sports editor became popular (Andrews, 2005). Already in 1930 newspapers started offering vacancies of sports editors whose job was to create the content for sports news. The appearance of Associated Press in 1945 also contributed greatly to the popularity of sport as it published sports news on the front page that was never done before. Television also greatly influenced the development of sports journalism, particularly in the field of baseball and football (Andrew, 2005). The area of sports journalism underwent many changes after 1954. These changes were caused by the creation of illustrated magazine, where sports issues were covered (Smith, 2008). The evolution of technology makes the area of sport always available even for those who do not go info sports but are still fond of sports competitions. These people can trace the results of their favorite sportsmen and teams on TV (Smith, 2008). The given paper will discuss the area of sports journalism. It will describe the organizational structure of the field as well as everyday life and the job of sports journalists. The work will also consider the future development of the field, and the issues sports journalists are currently facing. 1.1. The main task of sports journalist What does the job of sports journalist mean and what does it give to us? The main task of the sports journalists is to explain latest sports events. This literature is very popular among sport fanatics but for those people who are not interested in sport it represents common news, which they may hear every day but do not focus their attention on. The specialists in the area under consideration usually prepare informative articles and broadcasts about sports competitions and the participants. They present fanatics with interesting interviews they make with sports stars. The articles and broadcasts prepared by sports journalists are not just informative but also analytical as their task is not only to present the information about the sports event, but also the analysis of it. “In Champion leagues, Saturday’s final against Chelsea, the Bavarians did everything they could to avoid wining: after months of effort, it was as though they didn't want the trophy. A lack of sharpness in every way characterized their game, from putting just seven of their 35 attempts on target to conceding possession again and again in midfield. All the hallmarks of their game: the precision in finishing, the crisp, assured distribution in midfield, were abandoned” (Myson, 2012). This is an example of the report prepared by sports journalists, the review with commentaries they provide. The task of sports journalists is to present us with deep analysis of the sports event and the explanation why these or those participants failed or succeeded. They have to analyze the reasons of failure or success of sportsmen. There are many controversial events in the sports history and for now the most controversial is Zidane header to Matterazi in 2006 (Alexis 2012). IN order to prepare interesting interviews sports journalists usually attend the conferences of Players and Managers. 1.2 Daily Routine Sports journalist routines are different and tough as compared to other journalist. Reason is very simple… Take an example of Science journalism; a science writer has to write about his research at a particular topic in a particular field in a Laboratory in which he works every day. However, a sports journalist has to commute a lot every day to attend games. They don’t have a particular 9AM to 5 PM timing because games are at night time. Sports journalists arrive at office in Afternoon to discuss the story and ideas with editor and call sources for possible stories (Angst, 2012). Then they head out to watch a game but before game, talk with game officials, players and managers ask about the team strategy and keep an eye out for breaking news. Average sports journalists work 50-60 hours per week. However, sometimes they have to work overtime in order to meet the deadline or broadcasting day’s requirements which are often part of daily routine of sports journalists (Angst, 2012). 2.0 Profile Age: Journalism is a young person’s occupation, and most of the journalists are between 25 and 44 (Weaver, 1996, p.83). Same goes for Sports journalist, but some sports journalist are in their 50s and still working. Gender: In recent years, the ratio of female journalists in the media industry has been increased but men still outnumber women in this profession (Poindexter, Meraz and Weiss, 2008, p.252). Sports journalism is dominated by Men. The female sport journalist covering sports may appear a new phenomenon, but it’s not the case. Women started working in the sports in 1920s (Creedon, 1994, p.67). The ratio of female sports journalist started growing from 1970’s after the passage of Title IX but still they are not that numerous as men (Ordman & Zilman, 1994, p.66). An Infromal survey of 50 high-circulation newspaper sports department in 2001 showed that Women comprises of only 13 percent, and more recent reports shows that only 11 percent of employees in sports departments are women (Ricchiardi, 2005). Class: Journalism has become a more easy way to earn name and money in a short run people belong to Middle Class (Greenslade, 2009). According to Ponsford (2009), in journalism most of the senior editorial positions are hold by people belong to middle class families and they are also bias toward other classes in promoting and appointing candidate. Race: There is no such issue in sports journalism regarding Racial Background. The National Union of Journalists of the United Kingdom and Ireland established a Black Members’ Council to campaign for race equality in the union and in the workplace and tackle racism in the media (Wong, 2010). Educational Background: Some journalists have a four year bachelor degree or post graduate degree in Journalism but this is not the case always, some journalists have degree in other field of education like Business, Engineering, Arts and Communication but because of hard-core interest in Sports they are working as sport journalists. Some Journalists even have no degree; they are the retired professional players, who on the base of experience and analytical skills and know-how of the game, are working as sport journalists (Angst, 2012). 3.1 Requirement To Entry To enter into a sport journalism field, the minimum degree which companies require is four year program in Journalism or communication. Some people have a post graduate degree in journalism or major in Sports journalism which is a plus point and has value for the employer. But this is not a necessary case, a lot of people who don’t have a degree but they are still working as journalist and earning a lot because of the Interpersonal and writing skills that are required heavily by this profession. Interpersonal skills are very important in sport journalism, one should know how to communicate and interact with the players and managers, and it helps in getting information. Writing skills are equally as important as Interpersonal skills in this profession; one should know how to write an entreating and interesting feature which pull audience toward it. Critically analysing skill also have vital importance, one should be enough capable of evaluating worthiness of a news and story and analyse the whole game critically, which means understanding the sport is of critical value and highly valued by Employer along interpersonal and writing skills. People should also demonstrate good judgement and strong sense of ethic while publishing any feature specially story of a player that it won’t use offending wording or fake story. 3.2 Industry Contacts When a person is looking for a job, he/she always try to use all the available opportunities. The one of the most relevant social dilemmas in the modern society is the obtaining a new job due to industry contacts. These contacts usually prevent well-qualified people from getting a job because it is given to a person who has industry contact. This situation seems unfair but it takes place in every industry. It is very important for sports journalists to have industry contacts as they usually help get a job and build a good career in the area under consideration. Many people who work in sports journalism industry get a job with the help of their friends and relatives who occupy prestigious positions in this or related industries. Industry contacts can also be obtained during the press conferences, where a person has an opportunity to show his/her advantageous qualities in order to be noticed and distinguished. A good place for getting contacts is also gymnasium, where sportsmen are training. A sports journalist can visit it to train and use the opportunity to meet sport stars to establish contacts. 4.1 Organizational Structure Main Employers: Main employers of Sports journalists are the organizations such as ESPN, Ten sports, Eurosport, BBC, etc. who are in the TV business and L’Equipe, La Gazzetta dello sport, Sporting life, the sporting news, etc. are sport reporting magazine whereas Associated press, The Times, The Guardian are newspapers which have a section of Sports. Most of communication organizations are large, specially mentioned above. Almost all of them are large organizations with hierarchal structure that every department has a head and a person know whom to report; everyone is responsible for one’s task and reports the task to his/her superior. Let’s take an example of ESPN organizational structure and see where Sport journalism fits in the department. ESPN: Entertainment and Sports Programming Network ESPN is a global leading cable television network in sports and is a heaven for sports journalist. ESPN broadcast live games, interviews, press conferences, sports news, talk shows and player’s documentaries and pre-tapped event telecasts. ESPN is a large organization with a hierarchal structure as you can see in the figure 1. ESPN has its own channel, magazine and a website. Currently ESPN is a global leader in providing sports entertainment and have the maximum share in sports broadcasting. ESPN has TV programs such as Mike and Mike in the Morning and sports centre etc. Sport centre is a daily sports news program which broadcasts latest and authentic news related to sports and a lot of people rely on opinion of ESPN journalist better than any other organization like Sky sports or Ten Sports. Whereas Mike and Mike in the morning is the talk show which talks about the big stories of the week. Sports Journalist works in the following departments which are shown by the arrow in the Figure 1 and 2. Figure 1: ESPN Organizational Chart (ESPN, 2011) Figure2: ESPN departments (ESPN, 2012) 4.2 Where does a sports journalist fit in the organizations? The department sports journalists work with is usually a communication department. Here experts in the field under consideration have the opportunity to set up contacts with the audience that is very important for their job. The main task of experts is to attract the attention of the audience who like sports. As we can see in Figure 1 that represents the organizational chart of ESPN, sports journalists penetrate internet, television and magazine areas working in the departments shown in Figure 1. We can see that ESPN fit into all the services as it provides interesting facts and establish strong contacts with the audience. 4.3 Rose of Labour Unions In order to succeed in the market media organizations should have good and well-qualified specialists. The success of every company depends on how much it invests in the research and personal training. Personal qualities and the experience of sports journalists mean much for the industry of sports journalism. Unfortunately, the industry tends to apply the cost-cutting strategy. Thus people who cost less money are usually hired. Certainly, this approach is not valuable for the sports journalism industry (International Federation of Journalists, 2012, p.33). Here we should mention the role of labor unions, which is very essential. Many scientists consider labor movement to be very important for the development of democracy as democratic regime is focused on human rights protection. Labor unions protect the rights of the people in the labor market and play the role of intermediary between the company and employees (Mishel and Mathew, 2003). Belman and Block (2003) state that labour unions stimulate economic growth as they influence organizational performance positively. Labour unions help the companies not to lose money invested in personnel training (Brown and Medoff, 1978, p.335). According to Brown and Medoff, high salaries can benefit the companies as they serve as a stimulus for good performance that increases companies’ productivity (Brown and Medoff, 1978). 5.1 Issues faced by Sports journalists Sport journalism plays a vital role in the development of Journalism in new media, but unfortunately it is facing a lot of issues. Hegemonic masculinity: This is not only issue only for sports sector of journalism but in overall journalism, our society facing this dilemma of Hegemonic masculinity. The theory of hegemonic masculinity represents the dominance of masculinity in the sports media (Hardin, Dodd, & Lauffer, 2006, p. 431). Due to this culture of hegemonic masculinity, the women are not much in numbers especially in leadership positions (Hardin and Shain, 2005, p.22), and most of the positions are handled by Men. Discrimination and sexual harassment. Notwithstanding that we live in the 21st century and feminists have done much to defend the right of women, females still suffer discrimination. Discrimination at the workplace is one of the most serious problems and the area of sports journalism is not an exception that is proved by the investigation held by Miller & Miller (1995), p. 883). According to the interviewed female sports journalists, men are in the privileged position in their field. It is easier for them to get a job and they usually have higher salaries (Miller & Miller ,1995, p. 883). The study implemented by Smucker, Whisenant and Pederson proved that women are happy to work in the field of sports journalism, but they are not satisfied with the promotion (Smucker, Whisenant and Pederson, 2003, p. 401). Moreover, women also suffer from sexual harassment especially in locker room, where they come to make an interview with famous sportsmen (Hardin and Shain, 2005, p.22). This often becomes the reason of early retirement. Corporate influence and biased reporting. Journalism represents the field, where corporate influence plays a very important role. Sport journalism is not an exception. It goes without saying that corporate influence often leads to biased reporting. In the modern business world clubs usually represent a source of income for the area of sports journalism as many clubs have connections with channels. Some clubs provide journalists with the special rights to cover the events. Therefore, journalists usually reports not what they want but what they have to. Certainly, such reports contain too much false information. Sometimes it is simply forbidden to write or broadcast anything negative about this or that sportsman. In this situation sports journalists have to provide people with false facts about the celebrities. Certainly, this becomes the reason of audience dissatisfaction. Source access problems: Most of the sports journalist especially newspaper sports writer reported that the most of players and coaches who are having high social status in the society mostly reject newspaper sports journalist for interview and story writing. The broadcast media journalist haven’t faced this kind of problem because of their role in TV and building star image of the players, this source access problem is becoming a source of jealousy and anger between print sport journalist and broadcast sport journalists (Salwen and Garrison, 1998, p.88). Unskilful writing of Young Generation: Sport journalists are dissatisfied with the writing skills of the young writer. People should need to work on liberal art training in journalism curriculum instead of only focusing on skills training (Salwen and Garrison, 1998, p.88). Narrow focus of Content: This is another problem faced by sports journalist, that they only focus on what happened in the game for example, what was the score? What strategy Chelsea coach applied to win the game? According to Salwen and Garrison (1998, p.88), sports journalist are too narrow in their knowledge regarding game, the need of sport journalists is to expand knowledge beyond the game and included politics inside the team/club or in the official organizations like UEFA, FIFA or NFL, banned medicine used by players, business in sports and other sociological matters that are relevant to sports and sports journalism. 5.2 Sports journalism development in coming 10 years The development of sports journalism field is highly dependent on the development of technology. New technological achievements brought new opportunities of getting and spreading information. Internet blogs replaced classical writing (Keith, 2009). The evolution of technology changed the preferences of the audience. Journalists usually ask the question: “Do you read newspapers?” “When did you read a magazine last time?”. The fact is that nowadays people do not usually read newspapers and magazines, they do not buy them. It is quite understandable because it is much easier to find necessary information in the internet and there is no need to spend extra money. Digital technologies displaced classical sports writing and now sports journalists have to use quite different ways to reach the audience basing on audience’s preferences and new opportunities provided by the technology. Blogging and podcasts are the future tools of sports journalism. Blogging helps get necessary information as different people have a perfect opportunity to communicate. The role of blogging is very essential in reducing corporate influence, moreover, it is a cost effective way to get the information. As O’Brien (2012) states, in order to have a good promotion, sportsmen do not have to establish contacts with sports journalists as they simply may enter the blog and say what they want. This opportunity plays an important role in reducing the cases of biased reporting and disproving false information. Sometimes teams hire a reporter like Sam Smith for Chicago Bulls. Zemke (2011) also considers blogging and podcast to be the future of sports journalism. He also talks about the University of Michigan official blog website and considers it to be a valuable resource for sports journalists. Zemke added that Internet provide journalists with great opportunities to work and prepare reports. In the modern society everybody has internet access and, moreover, internet became the only place people are looking for the news now. Conclusion Sports journalism which was once considered as a toy department in Newspapers and broadcasting channels, now become a revenue generating house for the organizations. Today, Sports Journalists plays a critical role in our life through Television, Newspaper, Magazines and Internet. Publishing a news or feature regarding game is not the only purpose of the sports journalists. Journalists in fact are the one who make us establish a connection with the game. People get to know about what happened in the game, strategies used by the coach, reason for the loss, speculation of future, know-how of the game and rules and regulation, in fact sports journalist develop an interest regarding a game in general public and strongly reinforced behaviour of people toward affiliated team. Sports journalism has faced many issues so far, and chances it will face many issues in future because future in uncertain. But there is a huge potential in this field of Journalism to grow in a future. As history has demonstrated the evolution in journalism through technology, with the growth of new Digital medium that is Internet especially blogging where everyone is virtually connected all the time, sports journalism will keep on growing at a fast pace. (Word Count: 3708) References Alexis, W (2012), What Does a Sports Journalist Do?, Retrieved 24th May 2012 from http://www.wisegeek.com/what-does-a-sports-journalist-do.htm. 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