podcast #3

Women in sports journalism have made progress over the years, but there are still challenges. The first female sports journalist was Margot Goss in 1924. Leslie Visor paved the way for other women, and now women like Doris Burke and Erin Andrews are household names. However, there are still issues of respect and inequality. Women often have to dress a certain way to be taken seriously. There is a lack of women in prominent sports talk radio roles. Media outlets tend to favor male applicants. Despite more women graduating with sports journalism degrees, fewer women are hired in the field. However, the future looks bright as younger generations have trailblazing journalists to look up to. Persistence and consistency are key to success. Hello, and welcome back to my podcast. If you're new, please subscribe, like, and comment. I appreciate you being here. Today, we're going to talk about women in sports journalism. This is a pretty hot topic right now because there's a lot of different things going on. But I basically just want to start from the beginning. So women made their first debut in sports broadcasting through sidelight reporting. The first female sports journalist for a newspaper was Margot Goss. She wrote for the New York Herald-Tribune in 1924 and 1925. Fast forward to 1984, Lesley Visor became the first female sideline reporter. She went on to be the first female color commentator on an NFL broadcast and only sportscaster to be broadcasted for the Final Four, NBA Finals, the World Series, Triple Crown, Monday Night Football at the Olympics, the Super Bowl, the World Figure Skating Championship, and the US Open. This was a really big deal for women in sports journalism. She really paved the way for other women to be able to do what she did. So she made it possible for women like Doris Burke and Erin Andrews, who are now household names in sports broadcasting. I do want to go into this little story of this reporter had in the media and doing sports broadcasting. So 16 years ago, reporter Anna Catherine Clements talked about her experience as a sports journalist. She tells the story about how she was waiting in the Jaguars locker room to individually interview several players after practice. She wore a green knee-length skirt and a black shirt with a high neckline. She had learned to dress comfortably yet conservatively as a reminder that she was there in a strict professional capacity. I think this is really important to point out just because she knew that she couldn't dress, or she knew she had to dress in a certain way to be respected because she was in a male-dominated space. So I think this just shows a lot of how the space was that she was in. Her first interviewee was a 300-plus pound lineman, walked in and saw her sitting in a chair, recorder in hand. She waved and said hello. He then walked over to the massage table, took his shirt off, lay down, put his face in the donut hole of the table, and said, let's do this. She realized he thought that she was a massage therapist. Nothing about her outfit or demeanor would have given him this impression. It was simply because she was a woman. And then she informed him that she was with ESPN, the magazine. And he quickly sat up, face read, and apologized. And we also have to wonder, what is to happen to a male reporter? This is just one of the many stories about women not being taken responsible in sports and sports journalism. And I think it shows a lot about how people perceive, think about reporters and women in the same aspect, especially when it comes to sports. While there are more women with prominent sports television roles than ever before, the same can't be said of sports talk radio. Of the top 100 personalities in 2021, according to talkers via the Women's Media Center, the Status of Women in Media 2021 report, zero. Out of 100 were women. Every person on that report was a man. In its 2021 Sports Media Racial and Gender Report card, the Institute of Diversity and Ethics in Sport out of the University of Central Florida gave the Associated Press sports editors their sixth consecutive F for gender hiring practices. This is also a really important thing to point out, I believe, because it just shows that there are a lot of feel like most media outlets for sports are more likely going to look at the men applications before they look at the women applications. As a woman, we have to prove ourself a lot more to be able to get into those roles. And the men just kind of have to get the degree. And then they're automatically taken seriously. But with women, they expect a lot more out of them and they have to get the degree, get the experience, get the years of experience, and then maybe they'll consider taking them on to the same position. With everything I've said so far, I think it's important to ask what has changed over the last few decades and what hasn't. Because there has been a lot of change and it has gotten better considerably. Former ESPN Sports Center anchor, Carrie Champion, now a broadcaster journalist for CNN, spoke recently about being one of the first black women to moderate a popular weekly sports talk show when she was hired to the first take in 2012 to 2015. Champion, who left ESPN in 2020, said, I am on the I Am Athletes podcast. The network executives just told her about her new role on the show alongside Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bailey's You Don't Matter, Just Be Happy You're Here. She was told that, you know, your opinion doesn't matter. Just be happy that you're here. Because they thought that they were doing this great, wonderful thing, that they were giving her this opportunity to be on this show. And I guarantee you that she would probably rather not be there and being taken serious than be there and not be taken serious. We see a lot of women being doubted on their knowledge of men-dominated sports and sports journalism just because of their gender. Many journalists were called having just spit random facts about football or men-dominated sports just so that they would believe that she knows what she's talking about and that she has to prove herself to other people. Despite 37.6% of the professional athletes in the United States being women, only 22.2% of sports journalists in the United States identify as female. And I believe that this is wrong. I believe that there are a lot of women who want to be journalists. I also found something that reported that more women graduated with a degree in sports journalism than men do. And that just proves that there is a gap in the hiring process of these companies that are mainly looking at the men and not looking at the women, because I guarantee that more women are applying for these positions and these jobs because they want it more and they want to do this as a career and I believe they should be given the chance. I don't know. I think it's kind of insane that this is even like a topic because it's like, why not give them a chance? They get the degree, they get the experience, they get the knowledge and they just don't even get looked at twice. But however, all this being said, the future is bright for the next generation of women in sports journalism. And they have grown up watching remarkable, trailblazing journalists that have shown them the way. There are so many women that have made an impact in journalism and the younger generation can look up to them and see that they did it and they were good at it and they made a career out of it. And so they can too. And I think that just really shows that persistence and consistency will make you successful no matter what you do. So that will be everything, I believe. Yeah. So thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed it, please like and subscribe, comment. Yeah. Thank you so much for listening. Bye.