"About." The Undefeated. ESPN, 2016. Web. 27 Nov. 2016.

 

The Undefeated distinguishes itself as the “premier platform for exploring the intersection of race, sports and culture,” and the site offers content on everything from listicles to long form journalism and sports analysis. Scott Brooks cited The Undefeated as a site that encouraged diversity simply by its nature, and comparisons could be made between ESPNW and The Undefeated, as both sites that work to bring minority voices to the forefront of sports journalism.

 

"AMERICA'S SWEETHEARTS! THE FINAL FIVE." People.com. Time Inc., 29 Aug. 2016. Web. 15 Nov. 2016.

 

People magazine promoted its August 29th issue by plastering a photo of the five American gold-medal winning gymnasts on the front under the bold headline “America’s Sweethearts.” The subhead read “Simone! Lauren! Madison! Aly! Gabby! The Amazing Athletes Share Their Emotional Journey to Gold.” By advertising these gymnasts by their first names only and branding them as “sweethearts” rather than “athletes” or “champions,” People magazine suggests to readers that the “emotional” story of their success is more important than their achievements on bars, beam, vault and floor. Sarah Grieves suggested that this kind of gendered language and informal wording may be more common in magazines that are looking for a more casual voice because her staff did not find the word “sweethearts” common in their newspaper analysis.

 

Armour, Nancy. "Sports Journalism and the Olympics." Telephone interview. 7 Sept. 2016.

 

Nancy Armour’s official title at USA Today is enterprise sports reporter, and her job has allowed her to cover everything from the Olympics to golf to football. She came to USA Today with experience covering sports for the Associated Press and said that she also held the responsibility of covering dozens of sports at the AP. “I wrote about the wheelchair Paralympics, Serena [Williams], Tiger Woods,” Armour said. “I like to think of myself as s a jack of all trades, master of none.” USA Today envisioned her as a columnist from the beginning, Armour said, a role that took some adjustment. “It’s uncomfortable to put yourself out there after you are trained to be the unbiased reporter, it’s disconcerting,” Armour said. “So I tried to do reporting columns, using information, quoting someone rather than just spitting things off the top of her head. I talk to experts who know more than me about the subject.” Armour said that she has seen women’s sports media change throughout her career, but she remains concerned as some of the gendered coverage that continues. “It’s disheartening to see things like that swimmer being defined in terms of her husband, but the fact that people were outraged about it and were calling the broadcasters out about it, that’s progress,” Armour said. “Ten or fifteen years ago, it would not have been part of the conversation.”

 

Axon, Rachel. "Women in Sports Medial." Telephone interview. 15 Nov. 2016.

 

Rachel Axon, like Nancy Amour, covers a variety of sports for USA Today, and she too traveled to Rio de Janeiro for the Olympics to witness and report on the athleticism of the top athletes around the world. Axon came to USA Today in 2012 from the Orlando Sentinel, where she covered the University of Florida, and she said one of the things that stands out to her about working at USA Today is the number of strong female voices in the newsroom. “USA Today might be the only company where we have two female columnists on staff,” Axon said. “I think that we might be the only paper that has that right now.” Nancy Armour and Christine Brennan serve as the two columnists for the company, and their voices help add diversity to the coverage of sports at USA Today. Greater representation, Axon said, helps inspire other women to become sports journalists, a change that could also lead to more coverage of women in sports. 

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Billings, A. C., J. R. Angelini, P. J. Macarthur, K. Bissell, and L. R. Smith. "(Re)Calling London: The Gender Frame Agenda within NBC's Primetime Broadcast of the 2012 Olympiad." Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 91.1 (2014): 38-58. Web. 20 Nov. 2016.

 

“(Re)Calling London: The Gender Frame Agenda within NBC’s Primetime Broadcast of the 2012 Olympiad” confirms what many sports scholars have pointed out: women’s sports coverage has improved, but it is far from perfect or even equal. This research, much like Cheryl Cooky, Michael A. Messner, and Michela Musto’s paper ""It's Dude Time!" focuses on television coverage, but narrows its topic to just the 2012 Olympic television coverage. Billings and his team assessed the entirety of NBC’s broadcast, all 69 hours, and found that while the quantity of women’s coverage came in nearly equal to the men’s coverage, the disproportioned degree to which NBC covered beach volleyball and gymnastics, and the language that they used to describe the women in these sports highlights that sexist mindsets remain prominent in today’s society.

 

Billings, Andrew. “Sports can start meaningful conversations.” YouTube. TEDxBirmingham, 6 April 2015. Web. 14 Nov. 2016.

 

“What was the lesson of my youth? Sports wield power. They have the ability to transport, transcend and most importantly teach.” In a 13-minute TED Talk in Birmingham, Alabama, Andrew Billings explains how his childhood love of sports, and his experience watching some of the most famous sporting events in history including Wimbledon, The Olympics, and the Masters, taught him that the way individuals talk about and consume sports can change the landscape of the country. “Sports can sometimes take on an inexplicable level of importance,” Billings said, as he described how sports has influenced worker productivity, church attendance and funeral themes. Billings advocates for greater education on the importance of sports and the ways in which sports can transcend boundaries. “Sports can start meaningful conversations,” is just part of Billings’ work on the subject of gender and sport, but his short TED Talk demonstrates his passion for the subject and explains his motivation for delving into the field as deep as he has.

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Boulongne, Yves-Pierre. Pierre De Coubertin and Women's Sport. Rep. Educational Science Research Unit, University of Paris. France: n.p., 2000. 21-26. Print.

 

Pierre de Coubertin, a founding member of the International Olympic Committee, fought against the admission of women into the Games for over a decade, arguing that women didn’t belong in athletic competition because “the true Olympic hero is, in my view, the adult male individual.” Through his words, he painted women as “the man’s devil,” a conclusion that author Pierre-Yves Boulongne said could be a result of “rigid Catholic conception.” Coubertin’s words serve as an example of how men in positions of power may have thought of women as they made their debut into the Olympics, and they represent a traditionalist mindset that women fought against every time they competed in sport.

 

Brennan, Christine. Best Seat in the House: A Father, a Daughter, a Journey through Sports. New York: Scribner, 2006. Print.

 

Best Seat in the House details Christine Brennan’s rise to the top of the sports journalism world and explains how her love of sports developed from her father’s passion and support. She writes that her family involvement in athletics and local games inspired her to become a sports writer, attend Northwestern University and blaze the trail for other women in the industry. Her perseverance and commitment to the craft of sports writing helped her earn the respect of top newspaper editors including George Solomon of the Washington Post, and in 1988, she used her experience to help found the Association of Women in Sports Media. She became the group’s first president and awards two scholarships to college students every year in honor of her late parents.

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Brooks, Scott. "The Sociology of Sport." Telephone interview. 26 Aug. 2016.

 

From the beaches of California to the cities of Pennsylvania, Brooks has found a home for himself, studying, researching and learning more about sports as society. As an undergraduate student at the University of California-Berkley, Brooks found a mentor in

Harry Edwards, a sociology professor who also studied race and sport with a particular focus on the San Francisco 49ers. Since then, Brooks earned a masters and PhD, published a book and earned teaching positions as the Vista Community College, Haverford College, the University of Missouri and the University of California Riverside.

 

Clarendon, Layshia. "Layshia Clarendon: 'It's Not about Dunking. It's about the System.'" EspnW. ESPN, 1 Apr. 2016. Web. 14 Nov. 2016.

 

Layshia Clarendon’s voice brings a professional athletes perspective into the discussion of equality in athletics, and Clarendon represents a member of a population that often gets ignored in sports media: women’s professional basketball players. “The sexism around women's sports can't be denied,” Clarendon wrote. “Figuring out ways to try to get men to respect our game looks like this: Designing skimpier uniforms, highlighting women who are traditionally beautiful -- and lowering the rims.” Sports analysis and athletes have discussed the idea of lowering women’s basketball rims to try to bring more dunking into the game, but women like Clarendon express horror at the idea. The rims and the height of the hoops are a fundamental part of the game, and Clarendon wants to be treated like her male counterparts in terms of game regulations and media coverage.

 

Clarke, Liz. “Five myths about women’s sports.” Washington Post. Washington Post, 26 June 2015. Web. 21 Nov. 2016.

 

Liz Clarke, a prominent Washington, D.C. female sports journalist who covers the Washington football team for the Washington Post, has frequently lauded Title IX for providing opportunities for women in athletics, but she argues against the idea that women don’t get enough media coverage. Interest, according to Clarke, should drive production, and “the clamor for more coverage of women’s team sports doesn’t appear to be a clamor at all.” Clarke’s comments represent the opinion that general enthusiasm for women’s sports is low because people just naturally aren’t as interested in women’s sports.

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Jenny Dial Creech. “ASWM.” Personal Interview. 19 Oct. 2016.

 

Jenny Dial Creech leads one of the largest women’s sports media groups in the country, the Association of Women in Sports Media, and she balances her responsibilities as president of this group with her job as the assistant sports editor at the Houston Chronicle. Creech began her career at the Chronicle as an intern and has progressed to an editing position, a highly competitive role historically populated by men. In her interview, Creech emphasized that the biggest change that has occurred in sports media over the last decade has been the advancement of social media, and she said that she has a “love-hate relationship” with her social media accounts.

 

“Having local followers looking to me for their information, it gives me a voice and a stronghold in this market,” Creech said. “At the same time, it allows access to people to say terrible things.”

 

Creech remained skeptical that women’s sports coverage suffers exclusively because of a lack of media attention, but she does believe that the media have a responsibility to tell good stories for both male and female athletes.

 

“Anytime that you do a great human interest on anyone, people are going to read it. The media does have to be responsible on finding these stories, and you shouldn’t have to wait until the Olympics,” Creech said. “A league like the WNBA, it grows with attendance. The league has to get better and the markets will follow.”

 

 

Creedon, Pamela J. Women, Media and Sport: Challenging Gender Values. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, 1994. Print.

 

In her book, Women, Media and Sport: Challenging Gender Values, Creedon cites a 1983 study conducted by Mary Boutilier and Lucinda Sangiovanni to highlight the “underrepresentation and symbolic annihilation” of women in sports. Research shows that women received 1/20 of Sports Illustrated coverage from 1954 to 1978, and, when looking at feature articles specifically, women received 9 percent of the coverage, compared to the 91 percent of coverage given to men in sport. Although this study primarily includes data from before the passage of Title IX, the numbers show the dramatic disparity between men’s and women’s sports coverage in one of the most widely-read sports magazines in America. Women, Media and Sport: Challenging Gender Values provides a background on the history of women in sport and assesses the ingrained sexism seen in much of the media coverage related to these athletes.

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Cohen, Rachel. "Women in Sports Media." Email interview. 26 Aug. 2016.

 

Rachel Cohen’s sports journalism career began with the Association of Women in Sports Media as an intern in 1999, and she has continued to thrive in the sports journalism industry since then. She worked for The Dallas Morning News for seven years before taking a job at the Associated Press where she covers “a little bit of everything.” Cohen traveled to Rio de Janeiro this summer to cover the 2016 Olympics Games but spent time just before the Olympics speaking at the Association of Women in Sports Media annual convention and working to inspire the next generation of sports reporters.

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Cooky, Cheryl, Michael A. Messner, and Michela Musto. ""It's Dude Time!": A Quarter Century of Excluding Women's Sports in Televised News and Highlight Shows." Communication & Sport 3.3 (2015): 261-87. Web.

 

Sports and the impact of sports on society changes every year as new technologies develop and athletes find new ways to train and perform to the highest level. “It’s Dude Time” is an updated data set that builds on a 25-year study analyzing which sports receive the most coverage and how that coverage is presented. Cooky, Messner and Musto conclude that women still receive significant less coverage than men, and sports networks are allocating more time than ever before to football, basketball and baseball. While the research team shows that women are less sexualized than they have been, the storylines about women remain simplified and less complex than the storylines about men. Messner also added, in a personal interview, that women’s play-by-play sports coverage has increased in terms of quality, “coverage in…sports news and highlights shows has been flat, or has even dropped in some ways.  Ditto for print coverage. So what we have is a sports media landscape that is very uneven, with some notable increases and improvements, and some areas with little or no change.”

Deaner, Robert. “Women in Sports.” Personal interview. 6 December 2016

Robert Deaner specializes in research related to evolution and the nature of human psychology, but as an athlete and a distance runner, he has particularly found himself drawn to studies on gender and sport, a topic he said that he “always enjoys talking about.” On May 9, 2016, Time magazine science reporter and editor Jeffrey Kluger wrote an article about Deaner’s April 2015 study called "Sex differences in sports interest and motivation: An evolutionary perspective." Deaner’s paper concludes that men are biologically more interested in sports, and he states that there is “unambiguous evidence” to show “a substantial sex difference in sports participation and spectatorship.” These differences are purely biologically, Deaner said in his study, “not merely differences in opportunities for engagement.” When interviewed, Deaner elaborated on his findings, but added that he does think Title IX has changed the way women are perceived in sports, even if they are still not men’s favorite athletes to watch, he said.

“Most men do respect the skill of women’s sports and some men will watch them, but they would probably watch men’s sports because of the strength and speed,” Deaner said. “A lot of men do respect women’s sports, and that wasn’t the case 30 or 40 years ago.”

Deitsch, Richard (@richarddeitsch). “The WNBA said its combined ESPN and ESPN2 viewership was up 11% this season over last year (224,000 average per game viewers vs. 202,000).” September, 21, 2016, 3:52 PM. Tweet.

 

Richard Deitsch boasts over 183,000 Twitter followers, and he keeps this group very up-to-date, tweeting daily and accumulating over 150,000 tweets. Deitsch also connects with audience through his sports media columns and his popular Sports Media Podcast. Each week, the SI editor and writer interviews different members of the media to talk about issues in sports and society. He has become a leading sports media critic and a credible voice on topics related to sports rules, journalism ethics and social movements in the professional athletic leagues around the country. Deitsch, also an adjunct sports journalism professor at Columbia University, specializes in women’s sports, the Olympics and sports media, and he has identified himself as an active ally of women’s sports on Twitter, retweeting posts from EPSNW writer Sarah Spain, interviewing Washington Post columnist Sally Jenkins for a podcast and supporting the success of female athletes who achieve greatness on and off the field.

 

Deitsch, Richard. "Media Circus: What to Expect from the Launch of The Undefeated." SI.com. Time Inc., 15 May 2016. Web. 21 Nov. 2016.

 

In a presentation this summer, Kevin Merida spoke to myself and 11 other young reporters about the growth and importance of The Undefeated, noting that The Undefeated allows athletes to “be seen in all their dimensions.” Merida notes that The Undefeated tells the kinds of stories that might not get “shower[ed] with love” on ESPN’s main site, but The Undefeated vertical allows writers to dive deep into narratives that need more explanation. The Undefeated brands itself as more than a sports site, it’s a place for people interested in athletics, race and culture, Merida said, and the journalists must work do to more than tell the expected story. “If people identify The Undefeated as just a site under a sports umbrella, they might not go the site,” he said. Richard Deitsch critiques and praises The Undefeated in his media column in early May, calling the site something that “sounds promising.” The SI writer also pointed out one of his biggest questions about the site in his early description, how much oversight and involvement with ESPN have, and how will the large company respond if The Undefeated publishes a controversial piece on politics? So far, The Undefeated has maintained a steady audience and a strong relationship with its parent company, a good sign for future publication and continued success.

 

"FAQ - Women's Sports Foundation." Women’s Sports Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Nov. 2016.

 

The Women’s Sports Foundation, which denied a request to be interviewed for this project, promotes itself as a group “dedicated to creating leaders by ensuring all girls access to sports.” The organization conducts research on women in sports and offers grants to women in sports to help them succeed in their athletic endeavors. The “Frequently Asked Questions” tab of the Women’s Sport Foundation website offers insight into the data that the group has gathered about women’s sports, and it includes facts and figures related to media, employment, athletic success and financial supplements. The FAQ’s cite the work of Cooky, Messner and Musto and their “It’s Dude Time” report when drawing their conclusion that women’s sports are covered less than men’s sports, specifically on Sports Center.

 

Freeman, Eric. "Adam Silver Admits WNBA Is Less Popular than NBA Thought It Would Be." Yahoo Sports. Yahoo, 17 Sept. 2015. Web. 13 Nov. 2016.

 

Eric Freeman, a Yahoo Sports writer, frequently contributes to an NBA Blog on Yahoo called “Ball Don’t Lie,” and his story on Adam Silver served as another entry on this blog. In his piece, Freeman looks back on the history of women’s basketball in the context of a memo released by NBA commissioner Adam Silver in 2015. Silver explained the WNBA’s lacking attendance and television ratings disappointed him, and he hoped that the women’s basketball league would have garnered more interest in the last 20 years. One of the reason put forth by Freeman and the WNBA commissioner Laurel Richie for the WNBA’s low interest is that the league has been marketed as a “cause” rather than a “sports.” The quotes and analysis used by Freeman suggests that he too believes that the WNBA may be more unsuccessful than he thought, and the quote used in the paper that “men's basketball fans proclaimed that they were having an undesirable product forced down their throats,” sums up Freeman’s thesis and main point.

 

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Giuggioli, Jessica. "Framing the 2012 Olympics: A Content Analysis of International Newspaper Coverage of Female Athletes." (n.d.): 1-55. Electronic Theses and Dissertations. East Tennessee State, May 2013. Web. 20 Nov. 2013.

 

Jessica Giuggioli comes to the issue of women in sports media from a personal background, as she competed on the Division I women’s varsity tennis teams at the University of Missouri and the University of Kentucky. During her playing career, she earned all-conference honors and conference honor roll honors, balancing her studies in Spanish with her athletic commitments. Giuggioli came to East Tennessee State University to earn her master’s in public relations, and she produced her “Framing the 2012 Olympics” piece as her graduate thesis. Her work provides a national and international perspective on how the 2012 Olympics impacted women’s sports coverage, and she highlighted that while women did earn more coverage and send more participants to the Games than ever before, women still saw more sexism in their coverage and their storylines were less complex. Giuggioli now works as a women’s tennis coach at Rutgers University.

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Grant, Helen. "Women in Sports Media." Email interview. 14 Nov. 2016.

 

Helen Grant has had an extensive career in British government, politics, women’s equality and sports, she has continued to be an active supporter of women’s sports and gender equality in each position that she has held. In 2013, she became the Minister of Sport and Tourism. Grant said that she continues to promote women in sports because she fell in love with athletics as a child and “personally benefited from the power of sport.”  In 2014, Grant spoke at a women’s sports conference and advocated for equal pay for female athletes and increased participation rates for women in athletics. Less than a year after her talk, Grant led the charge on the Women and Sport Advisory Board Final Report for the government and noted that women’s sports media coverage has increased but more women need to be in sport for change to be quicker and more dramatic. Grant’s credibility and experience with women’s sport in Britain make her a valuable source for US and UK research on women in sport and women in sport media.

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Sarah Grieves. “Women in Sports Media.” Personal interview. 12 September 2016.

 

Sarah Grieves doesn’t specialize in sports scholarship, but her work on the London and Rio Olympic earned her great attention in the sports media sphere when she published a study showing the sexist language found in much of the 2012 and 2016 Olympic coverage.

 

We generally carry out research in to the English Language, more in relation to which language we teach, which language people have trouble with when learning English,” Grieves said. “We build up huge collection of samples of texts, written or spoken recording. We do our research on this massive collection called the corpus, we can do research into things, have a look at the language of sport, and it just so happened that there was something interesting going on.”

Her work showed that men are two times more likely to be mentioned in a sports story that women, and women are more likely to be discussed her relation to their marital status and physical appearance than their athletic accomplishments. Grieves said that despite the results from Rio that showed continued sexism, the climate for women in sports has been improving, and she said she would be curious to assess the language after 2020.

 

Franklin, Missy. "Women in Sports." Email interview. 31 Oct. 2016.

 

In 2012, Missy Franklin became a media sensation. She graced magazine covers, she received profiles in Sports Illustrated, ESPN, Swimming World, Splash Magazine and more; she then followed all the media hype with four gold-medal wins in the London Olympic Games. Although she failed to match her medal count in Rio four years later, Franklin still came away from the meet with a gold medal in a relay and the chance to compete on the Olympic stage. Her perspective on women in sports media adds to the discussion on the issue of gender equality in sports coverage because she has personally been covered in national and international media and knows firsthand the struggles and rewards that come with being a high-profile female athlete.

 

Hardin, Marie. “Women in Sports Media.” Email interview. 11 Sept. 2016.

 

Marie Hardin oversees the Communication Department at Pennsylvania State University in her official role as Dean, but she also spends time conducting research on diversity in the media and the effect of sports on society. This summer, Hardin traveled to Rio de Janeiro to cover the Paralympic Games with nine of her students and helped them receive hands-on experience covering world-class athletes and reporting on their stories for the Associated Press. The Olympics, Hardin said, “help a great deal” for women to receive media coverage “because they provide strong exposure for the best athletes in the world.” Although she remains skeptical that sexism will be removed from sports media, she holds out hope that change could happen long-term.  “The only way sexism would be removed is by changing our understanding of gender entirely. We're a long way from that. It's possible -- but not probable in the near term.”

 

Jones, Jeffrey. "As Industry Grows, Percentage of U.S. Sports Fans Steady." Gallup.com. Gallup Inc., 17 June 2015. Web. 28 Nov. 2016.

 

In June 2015, almost exactly one year before the 2016 Olympic Trials and one month before the US women won the World Cup, Gallup conducted a nationwide survey to assess the sports fan base in the United States and evaluate the percentage of fans in each gender and income bracket. The survey polled 1,527 adults via phone from June 2-June 7 and found that 59 percent of American’s identify themselves as sports fan, a number nearly consistent with previous studies. Gallup also found that more men identify themselves as sports fans than women, by a difference of 15 percent.

 

Kane, Mary Jo. "Media Coverage of the Female Athlete Before, During, and after Title IX: Sports Illustrated Revisited." Duke Journal of Gender Law and Policy (1996): 95-127. Web. 14 Nov. 2016.

 

Mary Jo Kane is cited as one of the leading scholars in the sport and gender field, and she has also been researching the topic since before 1989. Kane received a teaching position at the University of Minnesota, and now heads the Tucker Center for Women in Sports at the school. Her research in the Duke Journal of Gender Law and Policy helps put Title IX in context and explain how and why the law influenced the participation of women sports. She points out that while Title IX inspired a new wave of female athletes, the media hasn’t quite caught up to this development. She centers much of her analysis in “Media Coverage of the Female Athlete Before, During and after Title IX” on the consequences of Sports Illustrated’s limited coverage of women, and her conclusions and concerns remains relevant and important today.

 

Kelso, Paul. "London 2012 Olympics: Women Ushering in a Golden Age of Sporting Equality following Successes at Games." The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 9 Aug. 2016. Web. 23 Nov. 2016.

 

Paul Keslo’s reporting on the 2012 Olympics demonstrates how the rise in women’s achievement, both in the United States and around in the world, inspired in a new wave of excitement and support. He discusses the landmark achievements of Nicola Adams winning the first boxing medal for Britain in the Games, and his article focuses on how her athletic achievement should prompt the government to provide more funding and opportunity for female athletes. Kelso’s article also adds historical context, and he briefly explains how boxing was the final sport in the Olympics that did not include women; this rule changed in 2012. Adams not only won a gold medal for Britain, but she did so in an even that had previously not included a women’s division. “What has changed is the spread of female success and its impact on the team,” Keslo wrote. “Adams’s medal was a breakthrough in a sport that has never been in the Games before.”

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Laskow, Sarah. "The Olympics Are the Closest to Coverage Parity Female Athletes Get." Columbia Journalism Review. Columbia Journalism Review, 24 Feb. 2014. Web. 23 Nov. 2016.

 

The Columbia Journalism Review strives to “be the intellectual leader in the rapidly changing world of journalism” according to it’s website, and article on women’s sports coverage in the Olympics aligns with that mission. Through interviews with experts including Andrew Billings, Cheryl Cooky and Delaware assistant communications professor James Angelini, and numerous academic citations and statistical evidence, Laskow explains the how the disparity between women’s and men’s sports coverage changes during the Olympics. Men still mostly have the advantage, she said, particularly in the winter Olympics, but this trend is changing. In 2012, NBC actually gave more coverage to women, but in the 2014 Sochi Games, men received 10 percent more coverage. While Laskow and the experts she interviewed remained hesitant to stay that 2012 changed the climate for women in sports, they did note that the London Games marked a milestone, and one that top scholars hope continues to shape coverage.

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Leonard, David. "Women in Sports." Email interview. 22 Aug. 2016.

 

David Leonard, a professor of critical culture, gender and race at Washington State University, was on professional leave at the time of this interview, but agreed to email responses anyway. His perspective on sports media comes from over two decades of work and research on sociology and society, and he has been quoted as an expert in sports and gender articles including Vox’s piece on the Olympics entitled “Olympics coverage and commentary managed to offend, annoy, and alienate almost everyone.” Leonard has published three books on race and sports, two focusing specifically on sports, race and the media. He said that mainstream media fails women, as well as blacks, because they highlight stereotypes associated with these groups. For example, with women, Leonard said, the media sees these athletes as a chance to sell sex and overly emphasize the appearance of these elite individuals. “Sexism and misogyny is central to American institutions; it anchors; it is in the air we breathe, it is part of the fabric that is America and its institutions,” Leonard said in an email. “Sports are no different.  Add to that, sports has become a vehicle for defining and teaching about dominant ideas about white masculinity.”

 

"London 2012: Was This the Women’s Olympics?" Channel 4 News. Channel Four Television Corporation, 12 Aug. 2012. Web. 23 Nov. 2016.

Channel 4 News evaluates the impact of the 2012 Games on London, the city where the Games occurred and a city that also saw great success from its women’s Olympic team. This article does not have an author, but the Channel 4 reporters and news team noted that 2012 saw an increase in female competitors from countries that had not previously sent women to the Olympics, boosting women’s equality. Channel 4 interviewed experts for their piece, including the voice of Dr. Helen Pankhurt, a relative of a suffragette. Pankhurt told the news team that the women’s 2012 Saudi Arabian team, the first Saudi women’s team in history at the Olympic level, serves as a “symbolically important” part of sports history. While the achievements and involvement of women in the 2012 games did inspire the IOC to declare 2012 a “historic step towards gender equality,” Channel 4 News still uses a question mark in their headline to suggest that the answer of whether 2012 left a permanent legacy on women in sports media is still debated.

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Martinson, Jane. "No Increase in Women's Sport Coverage since the 2012 Olympics." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 13 Mar. 2014. Web. 23 Nov. 2016.

 

Jane Martinson’s article directly relates the Channel 4 News report on the 2012 “equality games,” but the research that she cites proves that 2012, despite the increase in women’s participation, did not change the way women are covered following the Games. In a study conducted at the University of Birmingham, lead scholar Dr. Claire Packer found that in the year following the Games, women were covered less than they were in the year leading up to the Games. "Maybe it was unrealistic to expect the 2012 games to solve the gender bias in reporting,’” Packer wrote in her study. “It needs a much bigger policy push and a bigger effort to change people's behaviour within the media."

 

McBride, Kelly. "ESPN Tries to Solve Equation for Women Sports Fans." ESPN.com. Disney, 22 Dec. 2011. Web. 28 Nov. 2016.

 

Kelly McBride’s “letter of intent” offers a critical analysis of the benefits of EPSNW and the business model of the site. Born “out of a blog,” ESPNW content started flowing in 2010, and the new material gave readers a chance to learn more about women’s sports, particularly women’s sports that may not normally be covered by EPSN. The major sports company was at one point criticized for its inclusion of women, but McBride’s article suggests that ESPNW might be a way for the company to improve that image. Since the launch of ESPNW and McBride’s “letter of intent,” ESPN has become “a leading driver of diversity in sports journalism,” according to Travis Waldron, a sports writer for the Huffington Post and former writer for Think Progress. ESPN also employs people as part of the Diversity, Inclusion and Wellness Division, and the current vice president of the division helped design the group and build it up. Monica Diaz, the vice president, has been a member of a Diversity and Inclusion group at every company that she has worked at since 2005 and has worked to help expand the company’s broad audience and employment.

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McGonigle, Maureen. "Women in Sports." Email interview. 3 Oct. 2016.

 

In 2013, Maureen McGonigle helped create Scottish Women in Sports, a non-profit organization designed to educate the public, increase participation of women in sport, increase the investment of women in sport and celebrate women in sport, according to the group’s website. The four-part mission helps to create a supportive environment and strong advocacy for breaking the gender barrier in athletics and honoring individuals who stand out through their service and commitment to success on the field. McGonigle said that while she has seen change in support of women’s sports since the 2014 Commonwealth Games, and even the 2012 Olympic Games which occurred before the creation of Scottish Women in Sport, she still sees major flaws with the way women’s sport are handled in the media. “We still need a turning point in the press and media. There have been breakthroughs but not turning points. The preoccupation with Football for men in Scotland is making this very difficult,” McGonigle said. “For me a turning point is when all bodies who have a responsibility for sport ensure that they take the same care and attention, provide an equitable level of investment and prize money for sportswomen.”

 

McManus, Jane. "The Year Of Women In Sports -- Where Do We Go From Here?" EspnW. ESPN, 31 Dec. 2015. Web. 14 Nov. 2016.

 

Jane McManus has jokingly been called “The Professor” on her radio show with ESPNW writers Sarah Spain and Kate Fagan, and her resume backs up the name. With a masters from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and an adjunct teaching position at her alma mater along with a job writing and talking about sports for one of the biggest network names in the country, McManus keeps busy, but she also frequently speaks out about women’s issues and sports concerns with sharpness and wit. In December 2015, McManus weighed the possibility of seeing change in women’s sports following the successful year of the women’s soccer team, Ronda Rousey and Serena Williams, and she approached the topic with objectivity and facts. “The Trifecta,” McManus’s radio show with Fagan and Spain, also addressed this issue in a special episode devoted just to women in sports. These women, while likely natural advocates of women’s sports because of their position as women athletes and scholars at ESPNW, evaluate their subject carefully and show little bias. In “The Year of the Women in Sports-Where do We Go From Here?” McManus’s headline is not intended to be sensational, she genuinely wants to know what will happen next in the world of sports, and despite history and predictions, no one will really know until time passes.

 

 McCutcheon, Roberta. "TITLE IX: Striving for Gender Equity in Athletics." The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2016. Web. 14 Nov. 2016.

 

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History prides itself on teaching history to students and the general public alike, and a team of nonprofit researchers, publishers and other employees have helped the site fulfill its mission since 1994. The Title IX section of the website fits within the larger context of American history in the 1970’s, and Roberta McCutcheon lays out exactly how the law came to pass, why it is written and what it means for women in sports today. She sets up the Title IX page in a textbook-like way, identifying the objectives for someone interested in learning about Title IX and offering discussion questions at the end. Although the site is likely geared towards middle or high school students studying American history, McCutcheon’s clear explanation of the law helps readers of all levels understand Title IX. Her work serves as a valuable source for this paper because she explains Title IX, a complex law, in a simple manner.

 

Messner, Michael. “Women in Sports.” Personal Interview. 10 September 2016.

 

In 2015, just a few months before the release of “It’s Dude Time,” Michael Messner, a professor at the University of Southern California, published a book with Max A. Greenberg and Tal Peretz on feminist allies and men who have stepped up to protect women against abuse. Messner said that he hopes that men come to understand the importance of women in sports and in society, and he encourages everyone to treat these individuals with respect. Messner’s passionate for serving as an ally for women in cases of domestic abuse or assault carries over to his passion for being an ally for women in sports. Humor, Messner said, specifically in the sports world, should not be used to degrade women, and male reporters should be educated and passionate about sharing great sports stories, regardless of gender.

 

“At the baseline, I'd want [men] to be knowledgeable about women's sports; I'd hope for some genuine enthusiasm from them about women's sports.  And I'd want them to understand that even though they are in the entertainment business, they should treat stories about women athletes with the same mix of respect and (non-sexist) humor that they use to report men athletes.”

 

Messner said that while women’s coverage has decreased in some outlets, he remains hopeful that the coverage will improve, and he said that he frequently watches women’s college basketball.

 

Molina, John. "Women's Basketball and Sports History." Email interview. 3 Nov. 2016.

 

John Molina has distinguished himself among other scholars of sports as one of the top experts on women’s basketball history, and he has worked as a historian of the sport for over two decades. His research and interest in women’s basketball started when he found a photo in his grandmother’s attic of her and a group of other women playing basketball. He continued to investigate and research the team and has since published a book, Barnstorming America, on the women in the photograph and the league they played in. His work helped the first women’s professional basketball teams, the All American Red Heads, earn a place in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, and he wishes more people, specifically women, knew the history behind these athletes.

 

“I would like to see today's players as well as the next generation get a real understanding of what it was like to play basketball at a professional level years before the likes of UConn and the WNBA,” Molina said “Today's athletes should become a bit more educated on the women that laid the groundwork for their opportunities they have today.

 

Moran, Lee. "The Media Are Saying And Doing A Bunch Of Sexist Stuff ..." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com Inc., 12 Aug. 2016. Web. 15 Nov. 2016.

 

Midway through the Olympics, Huffington Post trends editor Lee Moran compiled numerous examples of sexist coverage and matched each example with tweets from Olympic viewers to show how people have responded to examples of sexism by broadcasters and other media outlets during the Games. His article was not the first to address this issue, as other writers including Jenée Desmond-Harris of Vox also laid out the dozens of examples of sexism in the Rio Games. Desmond-Harris wrote in her piece titled “Olympics coverage and commentary managed to offend, annoy, and alienate almost everyone” that “Rio 2016 didn’t create racism, sexism, and homophobia — it just gave them a two-week platform,” and Moran’s piece sends the same message, as he wrote “the 2016 Rio Games is proving that sexism is, lamentably, still a thing.” In a personal interview, Moran said that he thinks sexism could be eliminated from sports, but it will take time.

 

“Sport is still very much a male dominated world, and I fear that the ingrained attitudes of some of the old-school sportscasters will be hard to completely eradicate in the near future,” Moran said.

 

Moran, Lee. "Women in Sports Media Research." Email interview. 2 Oct. 2016.

 

Lee Moran’s coverage of the Olympics in his article “The Media Are Saying And Doing A Bunch Of Sexist Stuff,” focused primary on United States media and US performers, but in a personal interview, Moran revealed that he is actually based in the United Kingdom. He said that he noticed similar sexism regarding the Olympic coverage in both countries, and he also noted the “same occasional perpetuation of stereotypes and negative reporting.” Moran expressed a positive view toward the growth and visibility of women’s sports, stating that with improved education, more women could receive the attention they deserve.

 

Morrison, Sara. "Media Is failing Women; Sports Journalism Particularly so." Poynter. Poynter Institute, 19 Feb. 2014. Web. 28 Nov. 2016.

 

Sarah Morrison’s piece on women in the media industry offers a critical look at the number of women in different journalism positions, and she explains the disparity that exists between the number of female and male editors, most notably in sports. Morrison bases her conclusions on the “Status of Women in the Media” 2014 report, a set of data that assess women’s role in creating and editing media content. She writes that the percentage of men and women in the newsroom in 1999, 63.1 percent male and 36.9 percent female, remained the exact same in 2012, and in 2013, the number of females actually dropped. In sports media, the numbers are even worse for women, as 90.9 percent of sports editors are male and 85.4 percent of sports staff writers are men. The Associated Press Sports Editors released a Diversity Report Card annually, and Morrison’s numbers on the percent of men and women in sports writing roles come from that report. She includes visuals as well to help drive home her point that “media is failing women; sports journalism particularly so,” and she notes that the diversity of a staff can also contribute to the diversity of sources, something that news outlets have struggled to meet thus far.

 

Myre, Greg. "U.S. Women Are The Biggest Winners At The Rio Olympics." NPR. NPR, 21 Aug. 2016. Web. 14 Nov. 2016.

 

On August 4, Greg Myre predicted that the U.S. women would come home with more medals than the men and see great success in the Olympic sports because of the opportunities that they have had via Title IX for the past four decades. “In many team sports, especially those widely played at American universities, U.S. women have become all but invincible,” Myre wrote in his early August article for NPR. Three weeks later, Myre’s prediction proved to be true. The woman won 61 of the 121 medals at the Olympics, and 27 of the 46 gold medals, with particularly impressive accomplishment coming from those who won multiple individual medals including Allyson Felix, Katie Ledecky and Simone Biles. Myre’s credits Title IX for some of the success of the women, but he also acknowledges that other factors contributed to the great wins of U.S. women. Allowing rugby into the Games helped bring more participation from women, and the increase of private gyms for women’s gymnastics has helped the U.S. see improvement in that sports as well. Trends now suggest that the women will continue to be dominate, and Myre hints that swimming superstar Katie Ledecky could bring home even more medals than she did in 2016. Ledecky is just one example of a female athlete who seen great success at the national and international level, and in 2020 more women could join her at the top of their sport.

 

Myre, Greg. "U.S. Women Will Rule In Rio (You Can Thank Title IX)." NPR. NPR, 4 Aug. 2016. Web. 14 Nov. 2016.

 

Greg Myre’s NPR piece on the women of the 2016 Olympics takes readers back to 1972, the first Olympic year after the passage of Title IX, and he explains the progression of women’s athletic success since that first Olympics, when women won just 23 medals and men won 71. Forty years after the passage of Title IX, women won more medals than men in the 2012 Olympics, and Myre wrote, in the days leading up the Olympics, that he expected a similar result in 2016. Myre uses his political background to explain that the trend of female success extends beyond the athletic field, arguing that “The rise of women's sports mirrors the greater prominence of women in every facet of American life, from the Olympics to this year's presidential campaign.” Yet, even with the increasing number of women’s medals and the historic presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton, women have not reached complete equality. Myre includes interviews with prominent women’s sports scholars including former Olympic swimmer and current academic Nancy Hogshead-Makar and Deborah Larkin, the CEO of the Women’s Sports Foundation to defend his point that salaries for women are still modest and more efforts need to be made to continue to support women in all industries.

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"Number of Sports Illustrated Readers in March 2015, by Platform (in Thousands)." Statista - The Statistics Portal. Statista. April 2015. Web. 14 Nov 2016.

 

Statista serves as a data site for those interested in statistics on everything from business to government to sports, and its data numbers on Sports Illustrated offer a look into where Sports Illustrated in capturing its audience and where the company is finding its greatest success. Over 38,000 people consumed Sports Illustrated content in the month of March 2015, according to the data, suggesting that the sports media that the company puts out reaches a mainstream audience and impacts public opinion of women in sports and sports in general. The chart released by Statista shows that the majority of Sports Illustrated readers are coming from the print magazine, rather than the online site, and the content on each of these platforms is different. Major awards, however, such as Serena Williams being named “Sportsperson of the Year” could be found both online and in the magazine. This source was used as background information when explaining the importance of Sports Illustrated’s sports media content and how the publication choices of the editors at SI can impact public opinion about women in sports.

 

Oglesby, Carole. "Women’s Sport International." Telephone interview. 15 Sept. 2016.

 

Carole Oglesby’s sports scholarship resume speaks for itself: radio talk show host, co-chairperson of the of the International Working Group for Women in Sports, a consultant for the Women’s Sport Foundation and a member of the Association of Applied Sport Psychology. Throughout her long and successful career, Oglesby has been an active advocate for women in sport, and she focuses her messaging on the theme of empowerment. “Through sport, women learn the qualities, and enhance their qualities of, courage, and capacity to endure and be strong,” Oglesby said. “Sport is empowerment and hope, I believe all of this stuff, I devoted my life to sport and women’s sports.” Oglesby comes from a psychology background, having earned a PhD in Counseling Psychology, but she has also done significant work in policy to encourage “national and international bodies to support equality for women.” “I think it’s important to work on policy,” Oglesby said. “We don’t see women in all realms of sport, women in coaching. Officially, they come closer to mirroring women’s coverage in the media, the 10-20% range. You won’t sustain things unless you have systemically change, you need women in all realms.”

 

 

O'Neill, Deirdre. "Women in Sports Media Research." Email interview. 25 Oct. 2016.

 

In 2014, just a few months after the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland, Deirdre O’Neill tackled the issue of women in sport in a column published in the Yorkshire Post titled “Challenging the media silence on women’s sport.” Her article critically called out the media for producing less content on women’s sports on a day-to-day basis and pointed out that the percent of media coverage devoted to women has actually decreased since 2002. The sports journalism industry could be seen as “a bastion of misogyny,” according to O’Neill, who cited an example of a Scottish reporter who demanded that a field be “torched” for sponsoring a women’s football event. In a personal interview, O’Neill said she remains hopefully that coverage could improve for women, as has even improved in broadcasting, but she clarified and specified that quality has not always improved. 

 

“I would say that anecdotally at least, women’s sports coverage may have improved on the BBC, which is a public service broadcaster, and which has to be more accountable than the press,” O’Neill wrote in an email. “There is great deal more coverage of women’s football [soccer] in recent years, particularly as our national women’s team is more successful than the men’s.  I certainly think it is setting a better example than our press, which, it has to be said, is generally right-wing and sexist. But there has also been research that shows that often when women are depicted in sports, they may be sexualised.”

 

O'Neill, Deirdre, and Suzanne Franks. A Sporting Chance for Women? Gender Imbalance on the Sports Desks of UK National Newspapers. Publication no. 1. Vol. 44. Colton's Point: Sporting Chance for Women? Gender Imbalance on the Sports Desks of UK National Newspapers, 2016. 12-20. Web. 11 Nov. 2016.

 

Much like Dr. Claire Packer’s study of women in sports media before and after the Olympic Games, A Sporting Chance for Women also looks at tabloids and broadsheet newspapers in London in the months before and the months after the Olympic Games. However, what separates the two studies is that O’Neill and Franks look specifically at bylines, rather than content. The two researchers aimed to identify what percentage of the articles appearing in print were written by women and what percentage were written by men. While they expected to find disparities, the abstract of the study states that the results were even more stark than we had anticipated.” Women never earned more than 3 percent of sports bylines throughout the time period of the study, and women’s byline numbers did not increase even after the Olympics, a time when women had high-profile broadcast roles. The results of this study paint an even dimmer picture for female sports reporters than the data from the Associated Press Sports Editors Diversity Report Card that states that women only make 9.1 percent of sports editors in the country and less than 15 percent of sports staff members.

 

“Our Story.” Excelle Sports. Excelle Sports, 2016. Web. 11 December 2016.

 

Excelle Sports has jumped into the open market of women’s sport media coverage with a creative and safe approach. The company, which launched in early 2016, partners with a variety of professional athletes, coaches and business professionals to promote the idea of women’s sports and encourage female empowerment. Excelle posts on everything ranging from volleyball to softball to the Olympics, and the site employs former college athletes, talented journalists and credible sports writers. Run by Kim Donaldson, a former NCAA Championship squash player, Excelle stands out from other sports media publications because of its unique, exclusive focus on women’s athletics.

 

Ottaway, Amanda. "Why Don't People Watch Women's Sports?" The Nation. The Nation, 20 July 2016. Web. 28 Nov. 2016.

 

Amanda Ottaway, a former basketball player and English major at Davidson College, takes a look at the producers of sports journalism, their background and their gender to attempt to understand why women’s sports coverage does not occur at equal or moderately equal rates. Ottaway includes quotes from Marie Hardin, the Penn State professor quoted in this study, and Dr. Cheryl Cooky, a scholar of sports media who worked with Dr. Messner on the “It’s Dude Time” report. Through quotes from experts and her own research, Ottaway concludes that the disproportionate number of men in sports journalism compared to women likely serves as a reason for the disparity in coverage, but not all women agree that this needs to change. “You’ll hear women’s sports advocates argue that if networks, and the media in general, would cover women’s sports more, ‘ [audiences] will come,’” Hardin said. “If that were true, media outlets would be doing it.… Nobody does more audience research and understands consumers of women’s sports better than ESPN. If they thought they could make massive amounts of money from coverage of women’s sports, they would be doing it.” Ottaway’s thoughtful article does not fully answer the question of why female athletes don’t receive equal coverage, as many scholars cannot agree on one singular answer, but her research and her interviews show that the issue continues to be hotly debated, and advocates on both sides feel strongly about their opinions concerning the role of media and the value of women’s athletic coverage. 

 

Pielke Jr., Roger. "Sports, in college and in society." Telephone interview. 28 Sept. 2016.

 

Roger Pielke, Jr. an environmental expert and professor of public policy, is also part of a historic sports program at the University of Colorado-Boulder. The western school will become the first secondary educational institution to offer an academic major in sports, something that Pielke believes greatly benefits students and society and will break ground in appreciation of sports studies by academics. “We’re creating a new academic unit inside the athletic department. I think it’s the first one in the country. Overseas there aren’t college sports program like in the US. We should stitch together athletics and academics. If athletics really are part of the modern American university, let’s take that seriously,” Pielke said in his personal interview. “There are a lot of people watching what we are going. We don’t have a degree yet, we are proposing an undergrad certification in sports governance. If it fails that will be notable too.” Pielke currently works as the director of the Sports Governance Center within the Department of Athletics at the University of Colorado-Boulder, and he published a New York Times opinion article in the fall of 2016 explaining why he believes that more colleges should allow students to major in sports. “Academic programs in sport can train the next generation of sports leaders, and at the same time help universities bring athletics closer to their academic mission,” he wrote in his op-ed. “Universities might look beyond the debate over college athletes as professionals, to seeing athletics as a worthwhile profession.”

 

Price, S.L. "Rainbows, Unicorns and a Shark: Link between Katie Ledecky, Missy Franklin." SI.com. Time Inc., 29 July 2016. Web. 15 Nov. 2016.

 

In a magazine feature about two female Olympians, Sports Illustrated senior writer S.L. Price points about the similarities and differences between the two college-aged superstars and describes how their personalities, their friendship and their approaches to the same sport influence both their public persona and their success. The article touches on the swimming careers of Missy Franklin and Katie Ledecky, comparing the upbeat, enthusiastic approach of Franklin to “rainbows and unicorns” while stating that Ledecky more resembles a “shark.” Coaches of both athletes are interviewed in the piece, and Price’s experience and career in sports writing gives him added credibility, but the problem comes in when he describes the athletes as “sweethearts,” a word often used as a term of endearment for young girls, not Olympic athletes. People Magazine, another Time Inc. brand, also used the word “sweethearts” on a cover featuring the five American gymnasts after Rio, suggesting that the publishing brand does not have concerns about the word being tied to top-level athletes.

 

Schmidt, H. C. "Women’s Sports Coverage Remains Largely Marginalized." Newspaper Research Journal 37.3 (2016): 275-98. Web. 14 Nov. 2016.

 

Like Marie Hardin, Hans Schmidt works as a professor of communication at Penn State University, and like, Schmidt earned his PhD from Temple University. And lastly, like nearly every other source referenced in this paper, Schmidt has an opinion on women in sports media. In 2013, Schmidt took on a study similar to “It’s Dude Time” and “No Lasting Legacy,” and he studied the New York Times coverage of women in sports for 30 years. Schmidt concluded that less than 6 percent of all the sports articles in the Times during the years of his study included women. His research also proved that women’s sports coverage decreased from previous years, including the time frame from 1999-2003 and 2004 and 2008. His findings align with Deirdre O’Neill’s findings that support for women’s sports in the media in non-Olympic years is actually declining on some media platforms. 

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Shergold, Adam. "Go Girls! How Team GB's Amazing Women Would Be Seventh in the Olympic Gold Medal Table If They Competed on Their Own." Mail Online. Associated Newspapers, 10 Aug. 2012. Web. 23 Nov. 2016.

 

Written with enthusiasm in an informal style, “Go Girls!” explains how and why the 2012 Olympic Games will be remembered as the “girlie games.” Adam Shergold, a sports writer for the Daily Mail, clearly lists out all of the gold medal winners on a sidebar to the right of the article, and he also describes that the Great Britain women, by themselves, would rank seventh among all countries in the Games, based on medal count. His article is broken up into several sections, each separated by large photos of British female Olympians. Although Shergold praises the “girls” for their success, he highlights the performance of Jessica Ennis is the women’s heptathlon, calling it “perhaps the defining moment of British success at these Games.” Ennis, he writes, was the poster girl of the British women and received great support after her victory. Shergold also includes an interview with a member of the IOC who also reiterates that London will be remembered as the “equality games.”

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Solunen, Dana. “Women in Sports Media.” Telephone interview. 27 Oct. 2016.

 

Dana Solunen made history in the sports journalism world as the first and youngest female editor for Ohio’s Tribune Chronicle in 2012, and she continued to serve as a leader in sports media when she took a job as the sports editor of the Opelika-Auburn News. In her current role, Solunen covers Alabama sports and she has been surprised and inspired by the passion that SEC fans show for their teams.

 

“It’s been a roller coaster to be honest,” Solunen said. “When I came down here, I got thrust into SEC football in the middle of the season. I came from more in Ohio, where I was born and raised, I was the sports editor there, so coming into SEC country, the deep south and getting used to everything, how passionate people are, SEC football, you learn from everything, every story you put out, you learn. That’s how you can grow the most.”

 

As editor, Solunen said she based her editorial decision on what she thinks fans and readers will want to see the most, and audience preferences typically revolve around success. If a women’s sports team is doing well, Solunen said she will devote space and time to covering them, but if not, she will cover the men more, just to satisfy what she considers to be reader desires.

 

Soong, Kelyn. "Here’s Just How Rare Serena Williams’s SI’s Sportsperson of the Year Award Is." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 14 Dec. 2016. Web. 14 Nov. 2016.

 

The headline says it all: Serena William’s election as SI’s Sportsperson of the Year was rare. She became only the third women to win the honor, and Kelyn Soong, a Washington Post sports reporter and blog contributor, explained that while Williams dominated the sports scene in 2015, her win wasn’t a landslide. She narrowly beat out horse American Pharaoh (AP) and basketball star Stephen Curry, a decision that caused one Post reader to post a comment expressing his frustration. “AP was on the list of nominees and got 300000 votes,” the comment read. “That's nearly half of everyone that voted. Affirmative action award winner.” Williams win, however controversial, was historic and also recognized her for her social work and involvement with Black Lives Matter. The Sportsperson of the Year honor gave a woman recognition in a year where a man and a horse were also up for the award, and her win suggests that major magazines like Sports Illustrated are willing to recognize the accomplishments of women above men and animals.

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"WNBA History/Timeline." WNBA.com. NBA.com, n.d. Web. 13 Nov. 2016.

 

On May 12, 2016, ESPN The Magazine released its 20th anniversary WNBA issue, a magazine full of stories about women’s basketball, the importance of the WNBA and the struggles that the league has faced in the last two decades. WNBA.com lays out the specific events that went into creating the history of the league, and the site offers a purely factual, written timeline of the WNBA. The women’s professional basketball league served as an example provided by many of my sources for why women’s sports may not catch up to men. However, this timeline reminds readers and sports fans alike that the league is young. The NBA in its infancy was not attracting the fan base that it is today, but it has grown to become one of the most popular televised events in America. The future of the WNBA is unclear, but the league is still attracting some viewers, and the talent continues to grow among the players themselves.

 

Women in the Olympic Movement. Rep. International Olympic Committee, 2016. 1-5. Web. 21 November 2016.

 

In January 2016, the International Olympic Committee released an updated factsheet of “Women in the Olympic Movement,” and the most recent edition includes the historical background of women in the Olympic while also noting the increased participation of women in the 2012 and 20156. The number of female participants has shown a nearly consistent increase dating back to the first Olympiad in 1900, and the events offered to women have also increased. The approximate 4,700 women who competed is, as stated in the paper, particularly remarkable because of the history surrounding women’s participation in the late 1800’s and into the 1900’s. The only events offered for women in the first Games included Tennis and Golf, but slowly, sometimes one sport at a time every four years, women have finally been granted the right to compete in all of the same Olympic sports as men. Boxing was the last sport to be added in 2012, and the precedent has now been set that if sports are added for men, they will also need to be added for women.

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"2016 Sports Illustrated Covers." SI.com. Time Inc., 2016. Web. 14 Nov. 2016.

 

Sports Illustrated offers a free extensive archive full of its previous covers, and the company also provides readers the chance to read old articles in its special webpage titled “The Vault.” In 2016, SI put five female athletes on the cover over the course of four issues, and two of those covers also included a man as part of a group shot. Three other women earned front cover photos, and one of those additional three was an athlete, but those three individuals were used on the cover as a promotional tool for the Swimsuit Edition and were not featured in athletic attire. In fact, the one athlete swimsuit model, Ronda Rousey, was seen naked covered in nothing but body paint. The company does not have a strong history of featuring women on the front page of the magazine, but the archives allow readers to clearly see every issues and write to the magazine if they too notice the visibility problem that has become evident to researchers.