Women sports journalists

Elizabeth Merrill, Michelle Voepel...

 

Staying with KC people: Holly Lawton.

 

If you're looking for a baseline, I would go back to Melissa Ludtke, with no disrespect to Lisa.

But if you're really trying to make it in sports journalism, I would focus less on past injustices, and more on today's environment. It's a very different culture.

I find that most women who are really successful in sports are quite expert at ignoring the gender issue. You don't want to be a female sports journalist, you want to be a sports journalist.

 

The Susan Fornoff-Dave Kingman incident was about 20 years ago, but that's another good one to use.

I've seen some very prominent female reporters put into very uncomfortable situations with players over the years and I must say that most of them handle themselves like absolute professionals.

Between Zeke Mowatt and Mike Lupica, Olson has had to deal with way too many little pricks during her career. She deserves better. Great writer and an absolute class act.

 

Chris Brennan can tell some stories

 

Things may have changed some, but when it comes to the pinnacle of sportswriting jobs (in terms of pay, visibility), SI is frozen in time. They haven't moved a female writer up from "reporter" (which is what they call a fact-checker there) to staff writer in about 15 years.

Kelli Anderson is the last one I can think of, and she gets to cover what - women's hoop. Lately, young Melissa Segura had a couple bylines on what - Latino stories, which, not coincidentally, match her heritage. That's about it. Susan Casey was an anomaly this summer with her Michael Phelps coverage... and I'm not sure how she swung that, exactly.

Yes, SI did hire Selena Roberts within the last year, but she doesn't even have a weekly column. She had more of a voice at the NYT, IMHO.

 

This strikes me as a debate from the early 90s.

I will say, though, that if a woman enters this field, she does herself a great disservice by expressing any kind of affection toward any athlete she covers. There is an underlying assumption, fair or not, there that the women are jersey chasers, and it doesn't take much for a male counterpart to draw that conclusion.

I don't think experience playing the sport has anything to do with anything, and I don't think people generally deride the relevance or quality a woman's writing or reporting because she is a woman. They deride the relevance and quality of a woman's writing because she is Jemele Hill.

 

I have no idea what any of this means.

 

I think it was a roundhouse sucker punch.

 

Intended for whom?

 

Jemele Hill?

 

Unclear.