Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sports media….
Women in sports media: Richard Deitsch of SI.com does a comprehensive Q/A with prominent women in sports media (includes Andrea Kremer and Michelle Beadle) on issues and obstacles they face.
Kremer:The definition of sexism is: “discrimination or devaluation based on a person’s sex, as in restricted job opportunities.” I believe that in the sports media, it’s still “easiest” to be a white male. Sadly, I think there continues to be a high percentage of viewers, listeners and readers who want their sports news and information delivered solely from men. The double standard still exists. If a man makes a mistake, he misspoke. If a woman errs, she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Thankfully, there are more women employed in the sports media than ever. I don’t think they’re viewed as such an anomaly anymore, but there are times it feels like women are token hires and not there based on knowledge and ability.
Bleacher Report: Andrew Bucholz of Awful Announcing looks at the changing direction of Bleacher Report under Turner.
Through numerous e-mail and phone interviews over the last month, Awful Announcing has compiled a variety of perspectives on Bleacher Report’s past, present and future; in total, they seem to indicate a dramatic shift from where the company was pre-Turner, with a new focus on big-name hires and professional writing and a substantial increase in the advancement curve. Whether that’s for the better, for the worse or somewhere in between likely depends on your perspective.
John Clayton: Dave Boling of the Tacoma News Tribune tells us what it is like to be John Clayton.
One of his ESPN colleagues tells what it’s like to go into a restaurant with John Clayton, media rock star.
They hadn’t even gotten to their table when a gentleman approached and apologized for the interruption. He asked if Clayton wouldn’t mind being introduced to his friend, who was a great admirer.
The bashful fan turned out to be former heavyweight champ Evander Holyfield.
Reminded of the episode, Clayton squinted and sheepishly nodded. “Yeah, really weird, huh?”
Weird, perhaps, but not unusual these days.
Tracy Wolfson: Matt Yoder of Awful Announcing has a podcast with the CBS sideline reporter.
ARod, Incognito: Michael Bradley, writing at the National Sports Journalism Center site at Indiana, looks at how Alex Rodriguez and Richie Incognito sought familiar ground for interviews.
The Rodriguez camp was counting on the fact that Francesa, a long-time critic of Selig, would use a softer interviewing touch than would someone else. It was a good move. Despite Francesa’s long career as one of the top voices in sports talk radio, he was not interested in fricasseeing Rodriguez on this occasion. Instead, he asked a series of questions – some pointed, most not – during a 40-minute live interview that allowed Rodriguez to talk about his innocence and how the accusations are tainting his legacy.
Kevin Burkhardt: Bob Wolfley of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel writes about Burkhardt’s road that eventually led to him calling NFL games for Fox.
Burkhardt, 39, worked a long time at being an overnight success.
He started out working at a 1,000-watt daytime-only radio station in New Jersey calling high school football games. Like everyone else starting out, he took “every freelance job for horrendous pay” because that’s what you do.
He didn’t get noticed for years but then WCBS-AM radio in New York gave him part-time work.
“It’s a field where everyone questions themselves because the competition is so hard,” Burkhardt said. “Besides the competition, it’s hard for anyone to even give you a look.”
Rob Stone: Mike Cardillo of Big Lead about how Stone versatility has worked for him at Fox Sports 1.
It was a risk, make no doubt about it, but it was a risk worth taking. In January 2012 Rob Stone left ESPN — his employer for nearly two decades — and took the plunge, leaving the Worldwide Leader for the relative unknown of Fox Sports to anchor its soccer coverage on the now defunct Fox Soccer Channel.
Nearly two years later, the move appears to have paid off for Stone in spades. In that time Fox launched its own 24-hour network, Fox Sports 1, and Stone’s versatility has him in the middle of the coverage, hosting soccer, college football and now college basketball programming on the network.
TV training: Reeves Wiedeman in the New Yorker writes about ESPN’s program to train analysts to talk in front of the camera.
ESPN, the Megalodon of sports broadcasting, has no shortage of retired millionaires sending job applications: both the N.F.L. and the N.B.A. host annual seminars for players interested in broadcasting, and a current Pittsburgh Steeler recently asked if he could work as an unpaid intern. But finding linebackers who understand the difference between B-roll and a boom mike can be difficult. “They go from a job where you’re trained to say as little as possible to a job where you need to say as much as possible,” Gerry Matalon, a senior producer who helps run ESPN’s on-air talent development, said recently.
Sports TV: Jack Godfrey of the Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism at Maryland reports on a panel discussion about the future of sports on television.
Partnerships between sports journalism and business outlets—and the power they have in the industry—fueled the discussion Wednesday night.
“Sports journalism is more and more sports business,” said The Washington Post’s Paul Farhi. The rest of the panel agreed that the concern is with how the business allegiances are taking precedent over journalistic relationships.
Ken Dryden: Stu Hackel of Sports on Earth about the Hall of Famer updating his iconic book, The Game.
Most notably, the 30th anniversary of the greatest hockey book ever written — one of the best sports books ever written — is celebrated with a new, updated edition. The Game, by Ken Dryden, has never gone out of print for good reason. It connects the reader with professional hockey players as few books have ever done by revealing that which is universally human in them, showing their strengths alongside their vulnerabilities and placing them within the context of a superior but sputtering team striving in a common effort to maximize their potential.