Raising the bar for sports reporting

The fact that two investigative journalists who do not cover sports (Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams) broke one of the biggest sports story in recent years -- Barry Bonds and steroids -- has raised questions about how sports is traditionally covered. In the most recent piece to do so, "Muckrakers in the outfield," Mark Jurkowitz calls sports journalists to task for failing to do more investigative journalism. His column follows a piece published April 1 in the New York Times, where Buster Olney admits that sports journalists were part of the collective reason for the "Steroid Era" in baseball. Olney goes on to make an important point: to focus the steroid investigation on a "few superstars" is wrong. It's an instituutional problem, and journalists need to expose it as such.