Not enough coverage of women’s sports? Blame “the market,” Trib sports editor says

EDITOR’S NOTE: For the last two years, WIMN’s Voices has published media analysis from women writers exclusively, in part to answer the marginalization of women’s voices on the nation’s op-ed pages and in other print and broadcast news beats — and top-traffic powerblogs — by positioning a diverse group of pro-feminist intellectuals as media analysts, opinion-leaders, sources and pundits for corporate and alternative media. With the following post by guest blogger John K. Wilson (in an exchange with Chicago Tribune sports editor Mike Kellams), we at WIMN’s Voices are signaling an institutional shift, in that we will now be publishing male media critics, analysts and activists from time to time, when we believe our readers would benefit from their insights. Our group blog’s editorial focus on media representations of women in relation to a wide range of socio-economic, political, cultural and international news beats — and on media activists campaigns that would be relevant to our readers — will remain the same.

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The following is an email exchange between John K. Wilson (former editor of the newsletter for Chicago Media Watch) and Chicago Tribune sports editor Mike Kellams about the lack of coverage of women’s sports in the newspaper.

I.
To the editor:

The enduring sexism in the sports pages is no surprise to regular readers of the Chicago Tribune, but today’s edition (March 16) takes it to new depths. In the entire 16-page sports section, there is a grand total of 1/16th of a page devoted (in the scoreboard listings) to female athletes. Indeed, the only woman mentioned in the entire sports section is actress Alyssa Milano, who is interviewed with a gigantic photo of her in a Dodgers halter top. A woman shouldn’t have to be a sex symbol to get into the sports pages. All of this occurred during a busy time for women’s sports, as the NCAA playoffs approach and a local women’s basketball team, Illinois State University , won a game to advance to the conference finals. Perhaps if the Tribune had more female sports reporters and editors, and more concern about equality, this kind of sexism would not be taken for granted. No one is demanding that 50% of the sports pages be devoted to female athletes. But the total exclusion of female athletes sends a message that women should be ignored and treated as sex objects rather than equals.

John K. Wilson

II.
To John K. Wilson:

Thank you for writing to the Tribune. I want to take a minute to address your issues with our coverage of women’s sports.

Let’s begin with the amount of coverage in the section today, March 16. If you look closely at those results, you’ll see a couple of things.

First, all but one of those tournaments are from conferences that we just don’t cover—men or women.

The one exception is the Horizon League, and even on the men’s side our coverage is not what you’d call complete. We don’t staff every game for UIC, Loyola, Valpo, etc. Nor did we staff the men’s final of the Horizon tourney after our locals were bumped. And the two schools in the women’s final— Cleveland State vs. Wright State —are not teams we’d pick up, men’s or women’s, unless they were playing a Chicago team in Chicago. That’s just the reality of limited staff and travel resources. Regarding Illinois State , we do cover the Missouri Valley Conference (MVC) to a degree similar to that of our Horizon coverage of men’s basketball. But the MVC is a one click down from the Horizon, if you will, because of the proximity of the Horizon schools to Chicago .

Next, the Alyssa Milano interview. You only characterize her as an actress, which of course she is. And her celebrity from acting is part of why we talked to her. But that’s not the only reason. We also talked to her because of her blog on MLB.com. She does a fine job with it and knows her stuff about the game.

Also, please know that her interview came from the same place as any others we’ve done where celebrity and sports intersect. It was the same idea behind our interview earlier last week with Djimon Hounsou, who has a mixed-martial arts movie out this weekend.

Lastly, I take from your letter that you missed our equal coverage of the girls state basketball finals; it was the same as we had for just-wrapped boys’ tournaments. Marshall High School had an all-time year and we brought those magnificent finals to you on both teams, just the same.

You might have also missed the separate stories we ran on the Illini women’s team run to the Big Ten tournament finals—just as the men’s team is doing now. (We’ll see if they have any better luck today than the women had last week.)

You might have also missed our story package on the No. 1-ranked Northwestern women’s lacrosse opening their season, including a short feature on their new, much-deserved stadium. It ran on our back page, just like the Milano interview. We have stories in the works on NU’s No. 1-ranked women’s tennis team coming (please don’t tell our pals at the Sun-Times).

You might have also missed our coverage of the women’s lacrosse championships, which is a bit like the NU Invitational now. Or our coverage of the DePaul women in the college softball World Series. We’ll also be at the women’s Final Four again, as we have for years, covering what we presume will be Candace Parker’s final days as a collegian. She said she’s going pro and you have to figure two NCAA titles in a row will be enough.

I really do appreciate you writing to us. But I don’t think we’re unenlightened bunch you seem to imagine.

To be perfectly honest, the reason there’s very little coverage in today’s newspaper is because there’s not much going on. And here’s why: Most sports know when to get out of the way of other sports’ biggest days. That’s why you don’t see the NFL competing head on with Sunday night games during the World Series. Or college basketball fighting with the big bowls and BCS title game or the Super Bowl.

And it’s the same reason the women’s tournaments, by and large, wrapped up last weekend. Today, Selection Sunday, is one of the single biggest days in American sports. We’ll cover that. And we’ll cover the women’s selections on Monday for Tuesday’s paper.

Thanks again for writing to us. I’m not going to argue that we’re perfect. Nobody is. But I truly, in my heart-of-hearts, don’t believe we’re as bad you say in your letter. We’ll strive to be better, as we always do. All I ask is that you read us with an open mind.

Thanks for your time.
Mike Kellams
Tribune Sports

III.
To Mike Kellams:

I wasn’t trying to single out the Tribune, which I suspect is no better and no worse than other papers. You are correct that the Tribune had roughly equal coverage of the girls’ basketball finals as it did of the boys’ finals. I imagine this is a policy of the Tribune, so I wonder: Why does equality have to end when women graduate from high school? Why don’t you have a similar approach to college athletics?

Well, let’s look back at the March 9 issue, last Sunday, of the Tribune. It had 5 column inches from AP devoted to the Illinois women reaching the Big Ten final (by contrast, this Sunday’s paper had front page coverage of the Illini men in the same situation, and a full page of stories and photos and a column). There was also 2 column inches about the DePaul women’s win.

By contrast, the Illinois State University men’s basketball team winning a semi-final game got 15 inches of coverage on March 9, including a box score. As you note, the Missouri Valley conference is not a major focus of the Tribune, but surely it is odd that you cover the men’s team but not the women’s team in successive weeks when they were in identical situations.

The March 9 edition does include a substantial story about a female skier, as well as a lengthy feature on ESPN sideline reporter Erin Andrews. However, I suspect that one key reason why you interviewed Andrews is because she was named Playboy’s America ’s Sexiest Sportscaster, since you ask her about it. I think this reflects a common tendency in sports journalism, such as Sports Illustrated devoting more attention to women in bikinis than women athletes.

It’s true that the Tribune has run many stories on female athletes. But the overall bent of the Tribune sports is focused overwhelmingly on men, as a simple comparison of column inches can show. There are many reasons for this, and few of them are the Tribune’s fault. But ultimately, I worry that you seem to imagine the Tribune has fair and gender-balanced reporting, when the reality is a vast inequity in athletics across the media. Explaining the reasons why female athletes are second-class citizens of the sporting world is an important thing to do, but it first requires recognizing that this is the reality.

Thanks,
John K. Wilson

IV.
To John K. Wilson:

Please keep in mind that a big factor in how we decide what to cover and when to cover it is, in concert with our best news judgment, what we understand to be the interests of our readers.

To stay with the specific example, the Missouri Valley Conference men’s basketball tournament just about sold out the arena in St. Louis (11,088 showed up for the final between Drake-ISU). The women’s tournament had an announced 1,829 for their final with ISU-Drake. That tells me the interest in the men’s teams–and games–is greater. That’s what the market decided.

It certainly is an interesting question: Which comes first: The interest or the news coverage? Where’s the chicken, where’s the egg? To be honest, I think it’s a gradual thing. Readers hear about news makers, then begin to follow along, and then we cover it more and more readers get interested and so on. But we can’t do that for everything. There are many NCAA men’s sports around these parts (tennis, wrestling, swimming, golf) who would love to be in the pages of the Tribune. They’re not.

And in that regard, you’re preaching to the choir, if you will. I’m the guy who’d love to have as many reporters and pages as the world would allow to cover it all, all the time. Everybody in the pool!

Clearly, we (the media) have a role to play in the world of sports. The NCAA has the greatest role, of course, in that it provides opportunity. And, if by some luck my daughter is talented enough to play college sports, I’ll love watching her compete.

But I don’t believe that, in the reality of limited and ever-shrinking resources, it’s the right thing for us to simply say, “everything’s the same and gets exactly the same treatment.” We just can’t do that. I believe we cover all sports as the news dictates – in fan interest, in accomplishment (an outstanding team that dominates, for example) and in uniqueness (something we have never written about, such as the five-day series the Tribune published on the making of the Sky franchise; no other outlet came close to matching us).

I’ll say it again—we’re not perfect.

But we’re not in the promotion business. In the simplest terms, we do our best to tell the greatest number of readers the most news about the things that interest them the most. And, when opportunities arise for us to spread out and share more of the world, we do that. Heck, we try to do that everyday. It’s just a matter of where the line is drawn. For the MVC women, we drew it at having the score; for the men, we drew it at having a story inside the paper. That’s the interest the market. We reflect that.

Mike Kellams

V.
To Mike Kellams:

For a long time, sports media have used the “market” as the excuse for ignoring women’s sports. But there’s a self-fulfilling prophecy at work here: lack of media coverage translates into lack of interest. A generation ago, lack of interest was the excuse for denying women the opportunity to play sports in high school and college. Today, it’s the excuse for journalists to ignore them. I suspect that the “market” for girls’ high school sports is smaller than for the boys, yet the Tribune makes a commitment to cover both. The Tribune also devotes some coverage to less popular sports, because as journalists your obligation, in part, is to tell readers what’s important, not to allow readers to dictate what the news should be based on the volume of the audience. The Tribune’s front section news coverage is partly determined by what readers want to know, yet at the same there is a commitment (desired by the readers themselves) to tell the public about important subjects even if the audience might “prefer” to read about celebrities. The same perspective belongs in the sports section, and a commitment to greater coverage of women’s athletics, particularly at the college level, ought to be part of that responsible journalism.

Thanks,
John K. Wilson

Guest Blogger John K. Wilson is the former newsletter editor for Chicago Media Watch, founder of the Institute for College Freedom, and author of several books, including Barack Obama: This Improbable Quest; Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and Its Enemies; and The Myth of Political Correctness.

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