Boxscores and Bylines - A Study of American Sports Journalism

The study concludes that sports sections of America’s newspapers are a passive and reactive space dominated by game previews and recaps with little room for enterprise reportage. The study is based on an examination of roughly 2,100 stories from the sports section fronts of 16 papers over 28 randomly selected dates in 2004, and amongst key findings are

• Planned events dominated coverage, making up 88% of all stories examined (with games making up 70% of that total, while press conferences, press releases and the like comprised the other 18%). Newsroom-initiated stories or enterprise pieces, in which reporters conceive a topic, investigate or study trends, made up only 10% stories on the sports front.
  
  
• Sports stories were overwhelmingly one-sided – only 12 per cent presented a mix of viewpoints
  
  
• The big three sports (baseball, basketball and football) made up a full 65 per cent of the stories covered on the front pages. Sports “issues” made up less than four per cent of stories.
  
  
• Female athletes were the main character in stories only five per cent of the time. Female teams only three per cent.
  
  
• Opinion and speculation from journalists appeared in 17 per cent of the sports stories studied.

More : http://www.journalism.org