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Around the Horn: ESPN & Sports Journalism
By: Jeffery Guillermo
Former ESPN sports columnist Hunter S. Thompson was fond of saying that sports box scores were the only thing you could trust because “there were too many witnesses to the final score for anyone to lie.” Thompson died in 2005, but this problem has its roots long before that year, and it still prevails in sports journalism today.
On October 5, 2007, ESPN’s ombudsman, veteran Le Anne Schreiber, wrote that “the main function of sports news is to serve as the molehill on which mountains of opinion are built.” She claims that “we don’t have news cycles anymore. We have opinion cycles.” This runs counter to ESPN’s current business model, as well as the view that sports discourse is “an uneven, complex, multivalent conversation” (99), a dialectic on the “box score, a litany of numbers that for the initiated, spells triumph or defeat” (96).
Sports news today is very different from the brand of journalism it was in the past. “If you compare it to sports journalism 50 years ago, it would be vastly different. You would be reading an excerpt of Shakespeare in an article on boxing. I don’t know anyone today that does that. That’s where you see objectivity and subjectivity morph itself, especially looking at the two extremes,” said Dr. Lee Igel, of NYU SCPS Sports Management. Yet, the technological advances have created an entirely different world for today. One modern addition is ESPN, “with its 24-hours of content across many different platforms and many different sports,” said Robert Boland, also of NYU SCPS Sports Management.
One notable change is in the ESPN sports news television program, SportsCenter, that has been shown every day since the network was founded in 1979. Some believe that the show is designed to be a “counterdiscourse, a form of sports talk that does not oscillate between the pointlessly quantitative and the endlessly unquantifiable (radio and watercooler talk, where debates are open-ended).” (Farred) According to Boland, SportsCenter was “once a straight a straight sports show. Now, it has become the key ESPN entertainment product, where ESPN brands itself. The change has been slow and gradual. SportsCenter became a shill in the generation after the first generation of anchors left the show. Now you have generic people giving you ESPN product as opposed to when you had personalities standing for their personalities. Now you have endemic sponsorship, multilayered into a business model. It has lost most of its objectivity.” This business plan first arose in 2002, when Mark Shapiro, SVP and general manager of ESPN programming, said that “sports is argument. This is what the fans want. SportsCenter will be changing significantly. You’ve got to have a bit of edge...to break through the clutter.”
The advent of the Internet also has changed a great deal about sports journalism. “The blogosphere has really changed the way reporters do their business. Journalists spend their days chasing rumors in the opinion cycle, trying to give source to them as opposed to writing stories. Sports blogs, ESPN, sports radio, etc. constantly stir the cycle so much that real reporting no longer occurs,” said Boland. Yet, the Internet is revolutionary with its capability to push information quickly, similar to the waythe printing press did in the mid 1400’s. “With the blogosphere, you don’t have to wait to respond, or hear responses,” says Igel. Yet, there is also “a lot of surface phenomenon, opinion often not based on reason that never scratches any kind of analysis. They may be half-wits, but they appear to know something about sports, and can shout well.” Nevertheless, the gatekeeping, agenda setting sports media is being replaced by bloggers that will “ultimately set the agenda: a democratization” (Boland). It is still a work in progress, with people training themselves to “recognize the bias” (Boland).
Despite its ombudsman’s warning, ESPN will most likely do very little to change their current business model. “ESPN expects us to change with them. They might put more programming that focused on it. Having five platforms allows them to give a little something to everyone. I would expect them to launch the ESPN Sports Journalism Network as opposed to changing their first platform, if they find that it makes them money,” says Boland.
Both Boland and Igel agree that there is still honest, objective reporting in sports. Igel even describes sports journalism as having an appealing, “laid back, colloquial style.” The developments in technology are allowing sports fans and journalists to bask in an abundance of information and opinion. Yet, the objective box scores of sports games provoke learned commentary, which is still “ultimately opinion.” (Boland) While journalists are still able to bring objective journalism into their work, commentary is what has built ESPN into the capital rich, media juggernaut owned by Disney. Subjective commentary in sports sells, and this has resulted in the continuing evolution of sports journalism.
Farred, Grant. “Cool as the Other Side of the Pillow: How ESPN’s SportsCenter has Changed Television Sports Talk.” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 2000; 24;96.
Igel, Dr. Lee. Clinical Assistant Professor of NYU SCPS Sports Management. Personal Interview. 10-16-07. E-mail:lee.igel@nyu.edu
Boland, Robert. Clinical Assistant Professor of NYU SCPS Sports Management. Personal Interview. 10-16-07. E-mail:rab11@nyu.edu
Copyrighted Free Use Picture. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Hdcset.jpg
Former ESPN sports columnist Hunter S. Thompson was fond of saying that sports box scores were the only thing you could trust because “there were too many witnesses to the final score for anyone to lie.” Thompson died in 2005, but this problem has its roots long before that year, and it still prevails in sports journalism today. On October 5, 2007, ESPN’s ombudsman, veteran Le Anne Schreiber, wrote that “the main function of sports news is to serve as the molehill on which mountains of opinion are built.” She claims that “we don’t have news cycles anymore. We have opinion cycles.” This runs counter to ESPN’s current business model, as well as the view that sports discourse is “an uneven, complex, multivalent conversation” (99), a dialectic on the “box score, a litany of numbers that for the initiated, spells triumph or defeat” (96).
Sports news today is very different from the brand of journalism it was in the past. “If you compare it to sports journalism 50 years ago, it would be vastly different. You would be reading an excerpt of Shakespeare in an article on boxing. I don’t know anyone today that does that. That’s where you see objectivity and subjectivity morph itself, especially looking at the two extremes,” said Dr. Lee Igel, of NYU SCPS Sports Management. Yet, the technological advances have created an entirely different world for today. One modern addition is ESPN, “with its 24-hours of content across many different platforms and many different sports,” said Robert Boland, also of NYU SCPS Sports Management.
One notable change is in the ESPN sports news television program, SportsCenter, that has been shown every day since the network was founded in 1979. Some believe that the show is designed to be a “counterdiscourse, a form of sports talk that does not oscillate between the pointlessly quantitative and the endlessly unquantifiable (radio and watercooler talk, where debates are open-ended).” (Farred) According to Boland, SportsCenter was “once a straight a straight sports show. Now, it has become the key ESPN entertainment product, where ESPN brands itself. The change has been slow and gradual. SportsCenter became a shill in the generation after the first generation of anchors left the show. Now you have generic people giving you ESPN product as opposed to when you had personalities standing for their personalities. Now you have endemic sponsorship, multilayered into a business model. It has lost most of its objectivity.” This business plan first arose in 2002, when Mark Shapiro, SVP and general manager of ESPN programming, said that “sports is argument. This is what the fans want. SportsCenter will be changing significantly. You’ve got to have a bit of edge...to break through the clutter.”
The advent of the Internet also has changed a great deal about sports journalism. “The blogosphere has really changed the way reporters do their business. Journalists spend their days chasing rumors in the opinion cycle, trying to give source to them as opposed to writing stories. Sports blogs, ESPN, sports radio, etc. constantly stir the cycle so much that real reporting no longer occurs,” said Boland. Yet, the Internet is revolutionary with its capability to push information quickly, similar to the waythe printing press did in the mid 1400’s. “With the blogosphere, you don’t have to wait to respond, or hear responses,” says Igel. Yet, there is also “a lot of surface phenomenon, opinion often not based on reason that never scratches any kind of analysis. They may be half-wits, but they appear to know something about sports, and can shout well.” Nevertheless, the gatekeeping, agenda setting sports media is being replaced by bloggers that will “ultimately set the agenda: a democratization” (Boland). It is still a work in progress, with people training themselves to “recognize the bias” (Boland).
Despite its ombudsman’s warning, ESPN will most likely do very little to change their current business model. “ESPN expects us to change with them. They might put more programming that focused on it. Having five platforms allows them to give a little something to everyone. I would expect them to launch the ESPN Sports Journalism Network as opposed to changing their first platform, if they find that it makes them money,” says Boland.
Both Boland and Igel agree that there is still honest, objective reporting in sports. Igel even describes sports journalism as having an appealing, “laid back, colloquial style.” The developments in technology are allowing sports fans and journalists to bask in an abundance of information and opinion. Yet, the objective box scores of sports games provoke learned commentary, which is still “ultimately opinion.” (Boland) While journalists are still able to bring objective journalism into their work, commentary is what has built ESPN into the capital rich, media juggernaut owned by Disney. Subjective commentary in sports sells, and this has resulted in the continuing evolution of sports journalism.
Works Consulted
Farred, Grant. “Cool as the Other Side of the Pillow: How ESPN’s SportsCenter has Changed Television Sports Talk.” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 2000; 24;96.
Igel, Dr. Lee. Clinical Assistant Professor of NYU SCPS Sports Management. Personal Interview. 10-16-07. E-mail:lee.igel@nyu.edu
Boland, Robert. Clinical Assistant Professor of NYU SCPS Sports Management. Personal Interview. 10-16-07. E-mail:rab11@nyu.edu
Copyrighted Free Use Picture. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Hdcset.jpg
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