Conversation About Covering Controversy: Recap

Penn State students, community members, and journalists met last night in a public forum to debrief and discuss the story around Penn State in recent weeks. The discussion took place as “A Conversation About Covering Controversy," hosted by the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism.

The event, a panel/Q&A session, took place in the Schwab Auditorium on the PSU campus.

On the panel were: moderator Malcolm Moran, the Knight Chair in Sports Journalism and Society and director of the Curley Center; Christine Brennan, sports columnist for USA Today and national sports commentator; Jeremy Schaap, reporter for ESPN; Mark Viera, New York Times reporter and PSU alumnus; Jerry Micco, assistant managing editor for sports for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and PSU alumnus; and Sara Ganim, PSU alumna who first brought the story to light in March as crime reporter for The (Harrisburg) Patriot-News.

The goal of the conversation was to provide context for this story and to provide professional guidance for the many journalism students who attended. While there were plenty of questions about the controversy itself and how Penn State should move forward as a community, the focus of the panel was clearly on how journalists should cover and report on such stories.

The panelists fielded questions about identifying victims’ names in news stories, using anonymous sources, and reporting on stories in close-knit communities for which the reporter is an outsider.

More general questions about how this controversy has or will affect the PSU community were also presented to the panelists. The most ardently critical voice in these discussions was Brennan, who referred to the Penn State scandal as the worst controversy in college sports and perhaps in all of sports -- and wondered whether Penn State and other universities have lost touch with their priorities. She defended a recent column she wrote in which she encouraged Penn State to take itself out of bowl contention.

The event was streamed live on the web and an archived version is available (see below).

-Brett Sherrick

Curley Center Chat Addresses Coverage of Initial Eligibility

While NCAA rules limit when a college coach can talk about an incoming student-athlete, media members almost invariably focus on standout high school students headed for college or pursue in-depth stories about recruiting.

Along with those somewhat opposing perspectives come ethical issues that touch on everything from privacy to the potential high-stakes pressure of intercollegiate athletics. And that backdrop poses problems for everyone involved—coaches, the media and the student-athletes themselves.

The related ethical challenges, responsibilities for all parties involved and even typical outcomes will be discussed at 1 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 28, during an online chat conducted by the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism at Penn State.

"Issues in Covering Initial Eligibility" is free, and people may access and participate in the session by visiting http://sportsjourn.psu.edu/chats online.

Participants include: Coquese Washington, women's basketball coach at Penn State, and Steve Wieberg, a sports writer who focuses on intercollegiate athletics for USA Today.

Malcolm Moran, the Knight Chair in Sports Journalism and Society and director of the Curley Center, will serve as moderator. The hour-long session will focus on journalism coverage of recruits, recruiting and many related issues with insights and opinions from the perspective of of a coach as well as that of a journalist.

In addition, the user-friendly format of the online chats allow for abundant interaction and questions from participants all over the world. Others involved with intercollegiate athletics, fellow journalists, college students and sports fans all may ask a question, comment or follow along by simply navigating to the chat online.

The Curley Center explores issues and trends in sports journalism through instruction, outreach, programming and research. The Center's undergraduate curricular emphasis includes courses in sports writing, sports broadcasting, sports information, sports, media and society, and sports and public policy, which is cross-listed with the Penn State Dickinson School of Law.

Conference realignment: Not the only story in college sports

While shuffling in the Big 12, ACC, and other conferences has grabbed sports headlines this week, we wonder if the story with far bigger, more profound long-term implications for the future of sports in the educational setting isn't the recent NCAA decision about coverage of high school athletes by the Longhorn Network -- owned by ESPN -- and the important issues raised in ESPN's proposal to put such programming on this network.
The reason for the NCAA decision to ban the network from airing high school games is obvious: The potential conflict-of-interest related to recruiting. But as college sports networks become part of the stable of offerings of a mega-media company like ESPN, the power of the NCAA to regulate them becomes significantly weakened. At the same time, the allure of cheap programming that high school sports provides is just too attractive for outfits like ESPN to ignore.
As John Ourand pointed out in a Sports Business Daily story last week: "High school programming on television and online is exploding at such a rate that new rules seem outdated almost immediately."
Our concern is with the bigger implications of this explosion in high school coverage. How will the growing media spotlight on younger and younger athletes in scholastic programs impact the way these programs are treated in the educational setting? We already see the problems and challenges caused at the collegiate level as sports have moved away from their educational mission to an ethic around performance and revenue-generation.
And ultimately, that might be the biggest story we're seeing in college sports right now.
--Marie Hardin

College athletics reform and where it should go

If Ronald A. Smith had his way, the NCAA would revive a decades-old rule eliminating freshman eligibility in sports. He’d enforce rules through the “death penalty” for sports programs, and he’d limit salaries for coaches.

A professor emeritus of sports history, Smith spoke at Penn State on Thursday to discuss themes from his book Pay for Play: Reflections on Big-Time College Athletic Reform. In his book, Smith discusses major issues in—and traces the history of—reform in college athletics.

Echoing the sentiments of previous speakers such as Michael Oriard, Smith suggested that if he was to institute one reform he’d eliminate freshman eligibility. Smith noted this rule existed for six decades through the 1960s and could only stand to improve current student athlete experiences. Preventing freshmen from playing would allow those student athletes to be more involved with school before facing the rigors of a life dominated by college athletics.

Smith also suggested that the NCAA has not been at the center of major reform efforts. Instead, laws and court cases have made the biggest impact on college athletics. Citing integration and women’s equality as the two greatest reforms, Smith pointed to Brown v. Board of Education, Civil Rights Acts and Title IX as the greatest vehicles for change. His belief is that significant, future reform will continue to come from outside sources, as the NCAA is not likely to enact considerable changes without outside pressure.

However, were the NCAA to enact more of its own changes, Smith believes that severe penalties would do the most for reform. Smith cited the cases of the Kentucky and Southern Methodist universities, suggesting that dissolving a program—or giving it the “death penalty”—for an extended period of time might do the most for integrity-based reforms.

In the past, most reform has been the result of efforts to level the playing field. Smith believes that in the 21st century major reform efforts will surround issues such as treating athletes as workers, licensing agreements, salary limits for coaches, and academic transparency. Although such efforts to increase academic integrity and promote fair compensation are worthy, Smith doesn’t believe they will be easy to achieve and come by because of the culture of collegiate athletics. Paying athletes, for example, would be an enormous task leading to increased commercialization.

Although reform is a hot topic in collegiate athletics, it may take a lot of pressure from outside sources to make significant changes. Scholars such as Smith continue to dedicate time and effort to discussing issues of academic integrity, fairness, and equality.

Curley Center scholars have focused on athletic reform issues. The Center has partnered with the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics (COIA) on an assessment of faculty involvement in athletic issues at FBS universities. The article will be published in the Journal of Intercollegiate Sport this summer.

- Melanie Formentin

Redirecting the gaze

After the epic Baylor-UConn game appeared on national television, the game story also earned a spot on cnn.com’s mobile page. Given that the mobile front page includes about eight headlines on average, cnn’s choice to include the recap represented some nice exposure for women’s collegiate basketball.
The story largely focused on the exciting game, top-level early-season competition and the superstar battle between Maya Moore and Brittney Griner.
However, in discussing Griner, the author included a parenthetical quote from a UConn player expressing amazement at her size near the end of the story.
There is no question that at six-foot-eight, Griner’s stature is unusual. After all, the average height for women in the United States is five-foot-four and 95 percent of 20-year-old women in this country are under five-foot-10.
Given that Griner has received national coverage since she was in high school – and plenty more during her first year of college during the 2009-2010 season, her stature is well-documented and thus remarking on her unusual height is something of old news.
Further, the quote lacked any reference to Griner’s play in this major early-season game and instead brought a focus to Griner’s unusual body. In including the comment, the piece became part of an ongoing narrative that focuses on women’s bodies over their athleticism.
Researchers have long written on the ways in which popular media coverage often emphasizes women’s aesthetic appeal, a practice achieved through featuring female athletes in passive poses rather than action shots, for example, or focusing on their off-the-court activities instead of their on-court athletic endeavors. Both strategies ultimately present female athletes as female first and athlete second.
Remarking on Griner’s body is a new twist on this old theme. When we view female athletes depicted in revealing dresses or with their kids away from athletic competition, we are invited to focus on their femininity – and ultimately their feminine bodies -- as opposed to their athleticism. Focusing on Griner’s unusual body redirects our attention in the same way, taking the focus away from her exploits on the court and returning our gaze to her body.
--Erin Whiteside

Oriard: Bringing Academics Back to College Athletes

The business of college football has changed dramatically in recent decades, and one scholar believes new changes are needed to re-establish the integrity of the relationship between sport and education. Michael Oriard, former University of Notre Dame standout and a Distinguished Professor of American Literature and Culture at Oregon State University, visited Penn State on Friday, Sept. 24 to discuss “A Conversation About College Football, Past and Present.”

In his pointed discussion, Oriard spoke of the need to understand how student athletes are affected academically by the business of college sport. Two changes he would like to see are freshmen ineligible to play and universities conducting “cost-benefit” analyses of the benefits and success of their programs.

Believing that a “fundamental contradiction” exists in college sports, Oriard discussed the struggle universities face when balancing academics, sponsorship and entertainment. Major programs place a premium upon on-field success, which may affect student athletes education. Training like professionals, students place less emphasis on the classroom and more emphasis on the field. By making freshmen ineligible to play, student athletes would regain a transition year. They would have time to settle into the college environment both academically and personally, and can experience college life without the rigors of full-time participation in a high-profile athletic program.

Additionally, Oriard suggested the need for cost-benefit analyses of football programs. Many universities strive to build and maintain elite football programs, but at what cost? If a program is marginally successful, maybe universities should consider pouring money into academics instead of athletics. Fundraising, student recruitment and student life often centers on athletics, but this may not be ideal for all universities. If a program achieves some success, is the university truly benefitting from the investments? It may be time to identify a way to assess whether college football programs truly serve to improve the academic institutions that house them.

- Melanie Formentin

Sports Information Divided Along Gender Lines

As the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments start this week, CBS and ESPN, respectively, will air a steady stream of segments on various coaches and teams. A sports information director (SID) for each team will help the media coordinate interviews, behind-the-scenes footage and those ubiquitous promo segments we will come to know through the course of these tournaments. On the men’s side, few of these SIDs will be women, part of a bigger trend in the sports information industry, according to a recent study by researchers at the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism appearing in the current issue of the Journal of Sports Media.

Sports information directors handle media relations for college athletic departments and are often assigned to work with specific teams. Using a survey of 775 sports information directors across the nation, the study showed that work assignments were sharply divided along gender lines. In particular, men composed 86 percent of all the SIDs in charge of working with football and 79 percent of all those assigned to men’s basketball. Conversely, the top seven sports most often assigned to women are women’s sports: women’s basketball, women’s volleyball, softball, women’s soccer, women’s tennis, women’s cross country and women’s outdoor track.

We applied Joan Acker’s theory of gendered organizations to sports information as an industry to suggest that the practices and norms of the organization reproduce socially constructed gender differences as a natural component of sports. Biologically, women are just as capable of working with football or men’s basketball, but the implicit idea that men are better able to handle these “tough” and high-profile sports, regulates the division of labor in this industry.

Furthermore, in the current sports media climate, sports like softball, women’s soccer and the like simply do not receive the exposure and visibility of a men’s basketball or football. If women are relegated to spaces where they work with “lower profile” sports, we naturalize the idea that women belong on the fringe of sports.

The survey showed that women are generally leaving the profession between six and 10 years of service, preserving sports information as a male-dominated industry. Those in hiring and decision-making capacities (mostly white men, according to the study) should interrogate sport assignments. A more equitable distribution of responsibility may foster a more optimistic career outlook for women, leading to longer job tenures and a more diverse profession in general.
--Erin Whiteside

College football promotes military values

When Maryland’s star receiver Torrey Smith caught a pass in the second quarter of the Terps’ game vs. Virginia Tech Saturday, fans saw the familiar No. 82 streak past his defender for a 21-yard gain.
Above that No. 82, though, was not “SMITH,” but the word “COURAGE.”
Maryland’s players were wearing special military-style uniforms as part of a promotion for the Wounded Warriors project, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping veterans transition to civilian life. The uniforms, also worn by South Carolina’s players in a separate game, featured camouflage sleeves and various military ideals printed on the back, such as “DUTY,” “COMMITMENT” and “COUNTRY.”
In some ways, the promotion was similar to the WBCA Pink Zone campaign, which raises awareness about breast cancer with the help of various college women’s basketball teams who wear pink uniforms and shoes on a designated “Think Pink” day.
What’s different is that the pink uniforms and shoes relate directly to the organization. The uniforms worn by the football players, however, promoted military ideals and gave no hint to fans or media members about the actual Wounded Warriors project. In fact, the Wounded Warriors project has its own set of core ideals, such as “FUN,” “INTEGRITY” and “INNOVATION,” but those words were not on the jerseys.
The Wounded Warrior project is not about blind commitment to country, but about helping soldiers re-adjust to life after perilous combat experiences. As scholar Michael Butterworth argues, such promotions are seemingly “innocent” displays, but position the United States’ military as good and just, while at the same time silencing critique of American military policies. In the case here, media accounts were more about uplifting stories from the battlefield and less about the problems soldiers face in returning from war, such as high rates of suicide or post-traumatic stress syndrome. As the Associated Press wrote:

[The Terps' Matt] Grooms spent six months in Kuwait outfitting and fixing transport trucks in Iraq. He was nearly killed by a virus and was rattled by an American missile that exploded too close to camp. Still, he said it was “the best four years I’ve had.”

No one will argue with the value of the Wounded Warrior project. And considering various reports about the struggles soldiers face in readjusting to civilian life, it’s clearly a badly needed program in need of visibility and support. Too bad the promotion forgot to focus on the soldiers who need that support.
-Erin Whiteside