Katie
Tyo
English
114B
Professor
Klepper
February
28, 2012
Internet vs. Sports
Journalism
Is the internet threatening the very foundation of sports
journalism? The internet makes a sports journalists’ job both easier and harder
for them to do. Since the internet came into use sports journalism has been
transformed many times most recently, the internet. It
seems like there is always an update on something in sports so to me it seems
that maybe the internet has made a sports journalists’ job ten times harder and
more chaotic. It is hard for newspapers
and sports journalists to compete with the effect that the internet has had on
sports reporting. Being a sports fan myself and a developing journalist I can
understand both sides of this problem. On one hand being able to have access to
all of this information and being completely up to date on everything in the
sports world is amazing for any fan of sports. On the other hand, however,
sports journalists seem to have a never ending job.
A decade ago the way fans got news on their favorite teams
and sports was by reading the newspaper every morning. Today the very existence
of newspapers is being threatened by the internet. Jay Mariotti worked for the
Chicago-Sun Times before resigning in 2008. While on a radio show he commented
on why he chose to leave the newspaper: “I think
newspapers that aren’t competing on the Internet are dead in the water. If we
can’t compete on the net we’re dead… I just cannot give my heart and soul to a
newspaper when they all seem to be dying.” (Sports Journalism in the Internet
Age1). The internet gives sport fans too much freedom and power with
what they can do. Sports journalism used to be about being with the teams for
every game and writing precise recaps of the games so those fans that could not
go to the games were able to feel like they were at the games. Once technology started to develop, mainly the
internet, the sports sections in newspapers started to get scaled back little
by little. Once the sports sections started getting scaled back in newspapers
then sports fans really started to use the internet for their sports information.
This changed a lot about sports journalism. Sports journalists started to need
to cut back and multiply their articles which meant that their writing wasn’t
as up to par as their previous work.
Even in America’s favorite pastime, baseball, people are not
watching the World Series as much as they used to. Now they just read about it
online so they can watch something else on TV. Can you believe that the World
Series is needing to compete with all of the reality shows? I personally find
it astonishing. The World Series used to be something near and dear to
everybody in the sports world and now the only thought it gets is about which
website or blog should be read to know all the details about the games. Is this
what our society has come to? All we are doing is reading about these great
moments in sports history instead of actually watching them. We need to go back
to the days when we did not only rely on sports journalism. We need to go back
to the times when there was an equal give and take between actually watching
the game and reading about it. What happened to the day when we looked forward
to watching sports games every day? (If Nobody’s Watching, Why is Everybody
Talking About It? 1).
The world of sports journalism was forever changed by the
internet. Once the internet came along every part of sports journalism was
changed like the rest of society. All of a sudden sport journalists had a whole
mess of new obstacles to contend with. These obstacles were eventually overcome
by nearly everyone in the game of sports journalism. Just like in everything if
you can’t adapt to the changing circumstances then you are not going to be able
to survive. Those who did not adapt and overcome those obstacles were driven
out of existence in the sports journalism world. Those who did chose to adapt
enjoyed a very lucrative career and most of them branched into other forms of
sports journalism such as sports broadcasting. Many sports journalists enjoy a career
that has many different platforms. These platforms include sports journalism,
sports broadcasting and other popular ways to report sports news all over the
world. These different platforms actually made the field of sports journalism
expand to what we know it as.
With the internet came blogs and bloggers. The internet
invited bloggers to give their opinions and analysis of sports not needing any
experience or degrees to do so. The internet has given anybody that has access
to the internet the power to blog about sports. The use of twitter has also
created an interesting new part of sports and sports journalism. Now those
athletes can basically talk to their fans directly. Sports journalists have had
to adapt to this new part of the sports world. Does twitter make it harder for
sports journalists or does it make it easier for them? With twitter athletes
are able to be in constant contact with their fans. It also means that a lot of
the trades and free agent signings are confirmed via twitter. Twitter just adds
a whole new set of complications to the field of sports journalism. Now it is
nearly impossible for a sports journalist to get a real exclusive.
The internet can make it possible for journalists to
research more easily and be able to stay up to date on all of the rumors and
fans’ opinions. Today we have access to instant sports updates 24/7. For the
fans the internet has been nothing short of a miracle. They are able to watch
the games live no matter where they are and they are able to always know what
is going on with their favorite teams and players. Giving the fans this massive
power is both good and bad. The positive part of this would be that the fans
are able to know everything going on with their favorite team whenever they
want. That’s great for the fans but not so much for the sports journalists. In
order to give this to the fans sports journalists and bloggers have to be
constantly updating and working to get all the information needed. This,
however, made it harder on the sports journalists. They now had to be
constantly working and had even shorter deadlines to meet. Their jobs were made
easier for their research but harder for their actual reporting. As in any
revolutionized field some were able to adapt and others were not.
Like many other fields sports journalism has been completely
changed by the internet. Sports journalism has been widely affected by the
internet. The internet as in nearly every other job field changed how they were
working within the field of sports journalism in more than one way. When the
internet came into the picture sports journalists had to change their way of
reporting and even their techniques. The most prominent way of course was that
sports journalists were able to research almost any person or topic in sports
from the comfort of their home. One of the other reasons was that the internet
changed how sports journalists were doing their jobs after they had been doing
them the same way for so long. These massive changes were hard for the field to
take but of course the field eventually was able to change with the technology
to make the field of sports journalism how we see sports journalism today. The sports
journalism is going to exist as long as there are sports with fans it’s just a
matter of what kind of journalism is going to exist.
Sports journalism was never the same after the internet was
readily available. Everyone had access to so much more information at the same
time that it was hard to ever get a hand up on a story. All of a sudden there
were websites popping up all over the internet that gave everyone the breaking
stories in sports right away so no one was out of the loop. This was a major
impact on the sports world. This is when sports media really started to
transition from mainly newspapers breaking the news to sports shows, sports
websites and sports blogs breaking the news in the sports world. These are the
sources that we look to today for our information on all things sports. The
sports world that we know today is there because of the internet.
When sports journalism was revolutionized by the internet
the field was turned upside down. Eventually the field was able to recover and
adapt. The field has also learned how to adapt with the new technology
developing without being blindsided. Many sports journalists were kind of taken
by surprise with how the internet affected the field of sports journalism. Sports
itself was also changed by the internet. The actual teams have their own
websites for the fans to use. They give fans access to so much information
about the team the stadium and everything related to the team and in order to
do this the teams enlist the help of sports journalists so it is attractive to
a sports fan.
Works
Cited
