Sports Media Review by Jonathan Weiler

Via True Hoop. I saw this very interesting interview with Dave Krieger of the Denver, sports columnist for the Rocky Mountain News. Krieger has interesting things to say about the state of sports journalism. Krieger himself began at his paper as a city hall reporter in 1981, but believes that most sports journalists really function as p.r. flaks for whatever team or entity they’re covering.

Here, for example is the exchange between Krieger and Sports Media Guide:

“I had just seen Tim Kurkjian (ESPN), who is a former sportswriter and I assume he still calls himself a journalist, arguing on TV that there should be no investigation into the steroid mess. He said, "What's the point – if you found out what would you do with it?"

My jaw dropped – I cannot imagine a journalist who would not want to know. Unbelievably I saw Tim Kurkjian last night on ESPN arguing that he would vote for Mark McGwire for the Hall of Fame because there are not enough facts available to prove he had done steroids. This is coming from a person who didn't want an investigation.

Q. You find Kurkjian's position ironic?

A. More than ironic. It is what an apologist or a p.r. person for Major League Baseball would do – block the investigation and then say there are no facts to prove anything. It's what government p.r. people would do when they're covering something up.

I came up as a news reporter. It's inconceivable to me that a journalist wouldn't want to know before passing judgment. I'm not picking on Kurkjian – I don't know him – and I understand he was a fine baseball writer. I've run into a lot of baseball writers with that view. They're so invested in that view that whether or not they're acting as a journalist is an open question.

If you take the position that not enough facts are available, after you opposed an investigation, clearly you are not acting as a journalist. Maybe you've gone over to the other side – you're acting as a promoter.”

Krieger says that sports are mostly just frivolous – entertainment, which is fine, except when serious stories come down the pike:

“I understand it's entertainment. I'm writing a column today about the Broncos that has very little journalistic value but huge entertainment value – the Broncos get huge attention in this marketplace. If I see myself that way – as an entertainer – then what I write doesn't have to have significance. That's fine – that's what I'm being paid to produce because there's a market for it. But when big issues like steroids come in, then we have trouble finding our footing because we're in a different role than the traditional journalist.”

Krieger also notes that access to the teams is becoming more and more limited for reporters. With the advent of NBA TV, NFL Network and MLB.com, the major sports entities are more and more able to cover themselves and give themselves just exactly the publicity they want. This leaves journalists on the outside looking in.

It strikes me that many sports journalists do like to criticize the entities they cover, for reasons I have discussed before, including their resentment at the growing gulf between their lifestyles and those of the players they cover. But, what most sports reporters don’t really do is traditional reporting. As Krieger notes, reporters ought to be embracing their status as outsiders. It’s noteworthy that he himself began his career as a city hall reporter because, as Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz argued in his 1993 book, Media Circus, American reporters once believed that their job was to “get City Hall.” What’s changed, Kurtz argued, was the infusion into the journalistic ranks of college educated professionals who were more likely to identify with the powerful. Without belaboring that point here, it seems clear that sports journalists are enamored of the trappings of big-time sports. They may moralize about player excesses and the like, but they are not likely to do the hard work necessary to scrutinize seriously the corruption and dark underbelly of the very powerful interests that run the major sports enterprises. This is why work by the likes of Pete Thamel and Duff Wilson, on store-front high schools handing out bogus High School diplomas to football recruits is so significant. Or why Neil Demause’s work on stadium issues stands out. Thamel and Duff and Demause do real reporting – digging for hard to find facts and putting them in a context that gives readers real information about abuses of power.

Not every sports story needs to be (or should be) about these larger issues. But, Krieger’s right  - sports media coverage today appears to erode the skills necessary for sports journalism to take on the big issues when that is called for. It's frustrating to see how rare those skills are.

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• #1 Comment from quitefranklyugh 
  12/11/06 11:48 AM | Permalink

  i don't have much to say but i feel sorry for this blogger because nobody is commenting. hang in there. eventually you will get a reader or two.  so many bloggers - so few readers.  it doesn't seem right.