• To kick off the issue,
Daniel Durbin makes the important point: "Predictably, sports journalists are relatively rare in the movies. Sports films are a small though important genre and journalists have only appeared in an even smaller number of those films."
•
Brock Adams writes about how Ed Axelby², portrayed by Ed O'Neill in the 1994 movie
Blue Chips. He examines the morality of Axelby's actions and motivations writing "Is he bound by the moral standards instilled by SPJ to report the truth objectively? Or, is he looking to expose the legend Pete Bell and figuratively mount the Western University men's basketball program scandal as a trophy on his wall?" Adams, who links the movie to the context of college basketball and the sports' actual and perceived corruption over the last 40 years, points out that it is the journalist who provokes Nick Nolte's climatic speech. "Axelby, a journalist acting as the objective liaison seeking the truth regardless of his true intentions, is the one holding him accountable to the public. "
•
Ben Carrington³
examines the image of the black sports journalist, noting that the only real representation of a black sports journalist in film was Wendell Smith in 42 — and Smith's role in helping integrate Major League Baseball is marginalized in the movie. Carrington links the lack of racial representation screen with the lack of representation in actual press boxes. He writes:
•
Donna Halper looked at the lack of women sports journalists throughout the history of pop culture. The first, she identified, was Pat Danbury (played by Astrid Allwyn) in the 1940 movie
The Leather Pushers. Halper found that women covering sports was often either a fish-out-of-water plot device (women knowing about sports? LOL!) or the means for a woman to find a husband. It wasn't until the 1990s that women sports journalists began appearing with some regularity.
•
Alan Tomlinson discussed how sports journalists are portrayed in novels, focusing on Max Mercy in
The Natural, Frank Bascombe in
The Sportswriter, and Jimmy Stirling in
The Man who Hated Football. These are very different characters in very different stories. But Tomlinson discovered similarities:
•
Chad Painter takes on sports journalists on TV, looking at Sports Night, the Odd Couple, Everybody Loves Raymond, My Boys, and Brockmire. The deep dive into Sports Night is worth its own post at some point⁴. But he makes a really interesting point about the portrayal of sports journalists on TV — that while they are all successful professionally, they are not so successful outside of work.
•
James Cartee III does a deep dive into the depiction of Harry Kingsley in the Disney movie Iron Will. Applying Semiotics Theory, Cartee notes that within the context of the movie, "Kingsley serves as a living symbol for the following values: hope, affirmation, and perseverance."
• Finally,
Jeff Fellenzer interviewed director Ron Shelton (Bull Durham, White Men Can't Jump, Cobb, Tin Cup) about the portrayal of sports journalists in his movies and in movies in general. Shelton said he is currently working on a movie about Ted Williams based on the legendary Richard Ben Cramer 1986 profile of him from Esquire.
