Newspaper coverage of women's sports

Late if you consider 9 p.m. ET late for the 1980 title game: Louisville-UCLA on NBC, the same time as this year's title telecast. That's the heart of prime time. (And the 1981 title game was an 8 p.m. ET broadcast on NBC. Coverage of Reagan's shooting ran until that hour, with a halftime update.)

 

I live in a college town and I make an effort to watch the local football, men's basketball, baseball and men's lacrosse teams because they play at a high level and it's entertaining. I follow the women's basketball and lacrosse teams and read about them in the paper because I'm interested in the results, but I don't really care enough to watch them if I'm not covering it.

I don't think I'm alone in this, at least around here, so I see some value in covering women's sports. That said, I'd probably be satisfied with briefs on those most of the time.

 

As hesitant as I am to get into yet another dispute about a long-ago game time (even though I am 1-0 in that arena), I am skeptical about your claim. Although, in this case, maybe I am just recalling the story that the end of the game was late.

This is quickly becoming another thread I wish I had veered away from.

 

They're going hog-wild over the tournament if it approximates what's being done for the men's tournament. Which I am in no way advocating.

But don't call it "hog-wild" when it's a lesser standard of coverage.

 

Really not a right or wrong answer there, just opinion, but my definition of tons more coverage than an event deserves would be prime-time coverage for regional finals that aren't going to draw a million viewers or fill half the stadium; media outlets being shamed into sending columnists (this happens, or happened back when travel budgets were more luxurious) to serve a very very small sliver of the population; newspapers running brackets for folks to fill out because, after all, that's what we do for the men; and, to return to the original thread start, a study that purports to look seriously at the question of whether womens coverage matches up to that of the men.

Ratings for the women rode a wave until about 2004 but then have been in steady and substantial decline. The media effort you're suggesting, that already happened, without much return for the media or the game. The coverage they get now is more than enough for the interest level.

 

Concussions/head injuries began to get covered because the cause of long-common medical injuries had been uncovered.

 

Harvard-Stanford was, obviously, a first-round game. Back in the day, the second two games in the first round of the men's Western bracket tipped at roughly 9:00 and 11:40 p.m. Eastern time.

 

I would just like to say that in no way was I referencing harvard-stanford as a ratings barometer. I merely said I remember watching that game so I remember that there was first-round coverage in 1998 -- sort of like someone might say "I remember the karate kid came out in 1984 because I went to see it and then came home and watched the olympics." all discussion henceforth on that topic is entirely beside the point.

I really wish the game I remember watching had been in 1997 or '99 so as to avoid this sidelight. But, I apologize for the confusion.

For the purposes of this discussion, ESPN has shown all 63 games (using whip-around coverage) since 2003. In that era it appears the event has lost rather than gained momentum.

 

We struggle with this all the time. We're a mid- to small-sized paper but with a very veteran staff throughout the newsroom. I feel like everyone has a pretty good gauge on what's important/newsworthy on their beats and in the community we cover.

However, our editor lately has been hung up on a recent readership survey that shows what stories people like and what subjects they may or may not be interested in. His interpretation of the numbers is different than mine but he's the boss, so we're making changes. In other words, we're going to be doing a lot more coverage of things that aren't necessarily in the readers' best interest, rather what they're allegedly interested in. So he wants less education-beat stories and more health/fitness. He wants less Legion baseball coverage in the summer but doesn't know what to replace it with (health/fitness was an option until he took that to our variety section).

Does that mean we're "marginalizing" that which gets less coverage? Or are we making sound news judgements?

 

The fact he wants to replace Legion baseball coverage with TBD makes me not think the latter. Summer is a suck period for pretty much every newspaper in America, and stuff that wouldn't see the light of pulp in January will get prominent play in July. I'm not the world's biggest Legion fan, but in most communities, that's for lack of a better term the biggest thing they have going, that or youth baseball playoffs.

 

First-round coverage at midnight. You keep trying to dance around that because you were wrong and made a bunch of statements based on that incorrect statement and then kept trying to defend them.

Not only that, but your use of the 1998 game as a reference point sounds similar to the 1981 men's game I used as such, which then sent you on some more crap-throwing.

It also looks like you keep reducing the field for how long ESPN has covered all the games. Now we're down to nine seasons, counting this last one. Not exactly an "era."

This discussion really seems to be beyond you. You keep reaching for facts, missing, knocking over everything on the shelf, then picking up a broken jar and saying, "See?"

The only confusion here seems to be yours. Nine seasons is less than one-third of the 30 years CBS has shown men's games, including regular-season games.

Finally, barring a huge advertising collapse, ESPN is going to show the women's games. Still not sure why this bothers you and others so much. Does your newsroom demand women's coverage? If so, why, that's just terrible. If not, I'd suggest not watching the games, not showing your lack of knowledge about the televising of the games, and just moving on.