PSUers at NASSS: Research Review

Presentations at the 31st annual NASSS conference wrapped up this weekend, highlighted by a handful of Penn State College of Communications alumni and current students. Alumna Erin Whiteside and graduate student Jason Genovese began the final day of presentations before students Laura Caldwell and Melanie Formentin also presented their current research.

Genovese, currently teaching at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, kicked off an early morning session with his presentation The Complexity of Sports Television Reporting in the Modern Sports-Media Complex. He highlighted the factors that complicate the reporter-source relationship in sports television media production. Using ethnographic techniques, Genovese outlined how reporters are adapting to the changing nature of contemporary reporter-source relationships. Reporters are feeling a push to adapt to new technologies, becoming more versatile and multi-skilled to work with changing technologies. Reporters also face conflicts of ownership; one group often owns the media outlet and the team being covered, meaning reporters must consider the wants of the ownership group when reporting on an issue.

Whiteside, currently teaching at the University of Tennessee, presented her work “I Repeat: I am Not a Lesbian!” Sexuality and Heteronormativity in the Sports Media Workplace. Using discourses of sexuality she analyzed underrepresentation and marginalization of females in sports media. Through interviews with female SIDs, Whiteside found that sexuality is an overwhelming part of the sports media workplace environment. Female sports media practitioners are consciously and constantly fighting the notion of being a lesbian simply because of their choice of profession. Experience playing sports, marital status, and working with women’s sports enhanced these feelings, making these professionals feel as though they needed to defend their sexuality in the work place, whether they were heterosexual or not.

Caldwell’s research, ESPN’s “Body Issue” and the Limits of Liberating Gendered Bodies, used textual analysis to assess that the images presented are both positive and negative. Caldwell analyzed both ESPN “Body” issues to determine if they explored and celebrated athletic form or simply sexualized the athletes photographed. Although the 2010 issue was more sexualized than the original issue, stereotypes of athletic beauty were challenged through the presentation of females engaged in sport and the inclusion of disabled athletes. Male figure skater Evan Lysachek also challenged athletic stereotypes by being shown in a graceful pose. She suggested that, ultimately, interpretations of the images are likely to be dictated by audience perceptions.

Finally, Formentin presented her work Moving Beyond the 2004-05 NHL Lockout: A Fan Survey. In this study, she looked at the 2004-05 lockout as an organizational crisis and attempted to gauge perceptions of the NHL’s reputation five years after the event. Using Situational Crisis Communication Theory, she surveyed 140 fans to assess whether variables of the theory can predict or be attributed to reputation following a crisis. A survey of 140 fans suggests that the league’s reputation has marginally improved. Additionally, Formentin found that it may be possible to deconstruct the notion of reputation to assess both organizational and industry reputation when developing crisis management strategies.

- Melanie Formentin

Female television sports reporters: Be attractive, but not too attractive

As pundits and opinion-makers have continued to weigh in on the Clinton Portis saga, discussion has turned to what reporter Ines Sainz was wearing, and whether or not her attire was to blame for the humiliating sexual harassment she was forced to endure from members of the New York Jets. Focusing on Sainz’s clothing and appearance places the blame on Sainz instead of a problematic locker room culture, and is reflective of tired “she asked for it” patriarchal discourse.

Blaming Sainz’s attire is a curious argument, given that there is an obvious unspoken rule that in order to appear on camera and cultivate a career in televised sports, women must exude a kind of heterosexual attractiveness through their physical appearance and dress. Women are thus left in a double-bind: In order to join “the boys” they must be appealing to boys, but should they be too appealing in a certain context (see locker room, Jets) their attractiveness becomes their own fault. Until we begin to see female reporters as qualified sports reporters and not, as Hannah Storm had to remind her two male colleagues on a recent ESPN debate “there to check guys out,” women will continue to be reduced to their bodies in ways that are never on their own terms.

--Erin Whiteside

NFL wise to condemn Portis' locker-room comments

The NFL quickly distanced itself from comments by NFL player (Washington) Clinton Portis that female reporters in the locker room are "going to want somebody."
Portis' statement is so offensive and ridiculous as not to warrant much comment. The problem with these kind of statements, though, is that they perpetuate the "locker-room looker" mythology about female sports reporters, which undermines their ability to be taken seriously as journalists in the sports setting.
Portis' comment, related to the harassment of reporter Ines Sainz by New York Jets players over the weekend, is also a timely reminder that perhaps we haven't come as far as we would like to think when it comes to fair treatment of women who cover sports.
It was 20 years ago -- almost to the day -- when sports reporter Lisa Olson was accosted by New England football players in a case that would put national attention on the blatant harassment faced by female reporters simply trying to do their jobs.
How far have we really come since that case? Incidents like those of Olson -- and, two decades later, Sainz -- and the misunderstandings around them point to the importance of organizations such as AWSM and continuing advocacy for women in the sports workplace. --M. Hardin

The Chicago Tribune, Sexist Sporting Imagery and the Case for Increased Gender Diversity in Sports Newsrooms

The old “you play like a girl” insult made a comeback today, courtesy of the Chicago Tribune. As part of its regular poster series, the newspaper depicted the Chicago Blackhawks’ Stanley Cup Finals opponent Chris Pronger as wearing a figure skating dress with the accompanying text “Chrissy Pronger: Looks like Tarzan, skates like Jane.”

It’s hard to believe such a blatantly sexist image would be given the green light in today’s post-Title IX era, but as research has shown, such discourse is part of the accepted culture in sports newsrooms, where sexist and mysoginist jokes are often considered “normal” and “routine.”

The poster itself uses ideology about the inferiority of women’s sports to suggest that Pronger and the Flyers are also inferior. The trivialization of women’s athletics in mainstream sports media is a common trope in research, but studies have shown that increased gender diversity in sports staffs may affect content. As one recent study found, when sports staffs include more women in gatekeeping positions, coverage of women’s sports tends to more often reject stereotypical frames of female athletes. Although that study focused on the representation of women’s sports, the bigger idea is that more diverse staffs may lead to more thoughtful coverage.

Considering women still are vastly underrepresented in sports newsrooms, and that clearly sexist imagery and discourse continues to advance past myriad gatekeepers, this latest mistake by the Trib offers another compelling reason for the increased gender diversification of sports media staffs.

--Erin Whiteside

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