I picked up the habit of reading the newspaper backwards from a young age. You’re always sure to catch the important stuff first (namely the sport) by leafing in reverse. Yet even now, it’s not unusual to have to turn a page, or two or three, before a female name crops up.
In many local papers, tales of athletic triumphs and trophies mix with talk from the region’s terraces, but little, if anything at all, from the sidelines of women’s sports. And it’s coverage for netball – the UK’s most popular participation sport for females, with more than one million women and girls taking part each week – that’s the most obvious omission.
In the town I grew up, the story is typical. There’s an active netball league, so eight or nine courts are filled with action during two separate time slots, every Monday night. If each team brings eight players along, that’s almost 300 women taking part in competitive sport, every week, in one town alone. Yet the coverage in the local rag may stretch to a league table every couple of months. That’s if you’re lucky. Compare that with the column inches reserved for Sunday league football, where tackle-by-tackle reports are the norm every seven days.
A quick glance at the sports correspondents’ names yields no surprises. The majority are men. It doesn’t take a woman to report on women’s activities, but I’m not sure many male sports hacks will admit a fervent desire to cover the latest happenings in local league netball. Newspaper sports desks need to widen their remit and their relevance to all of their readers. Regional media has been through some hard times of late, but a good local daily holds great power in helping to raise the profile of sport for all. It’s an essential means for encouraging more people, especially women, to get involved in activities in their area.
Bev Howard is an editor for a charity and lives in south London. Aside from regular netballing, she spends most of her weekends playing the obscure Dutch sport of Korfball – which boys can play too.
Bev Howard, Sportsister
The Women’s Sports Magazine
Image credit: www.backpageimages.com
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6 Comments
Re: Women, where are you?
I have been writing about women’s sport for quite a few years now, starting with reports for local newspapers and more latterly on various websites.
I was interested to read Bev’s article and the perception that even in the local press there is a bias against women’s sport because I am not sure that this is the case. Obviously, local press and their sport publishing policies vary – for example, if the area has a professional sports team (invariably male) that team will get the main coverage – but beyond that I never had problems getting the local press to give good coverage to the girls’ and women’s teams I was writing for – indeed when I wrote the press releases and match reports for the local women’s cricket team that actually started to get bigger headlines than the men.
In my experience, getting coverage was nothing to do with bias but everything to do with the quality of writing. Yes – your local men’s teams and men’s sports start with an advantage because the local sports editor will have been dealing with them for years, but with well written, exciting, releases produced reliably week in, week out and in a form that the editor can pretty much drop straight into his pages, you can overcome that.
The key things are…
*to take lessons in writing press releases,
*produce reports for your newspaper every week,
*write in the same style that the local paper uses,
*try to get in a personal touch – build a story round a character in the team (this is especially important for a sport that is not normally covered)
*highlight forthcoming newsworthy events – and keep highlighting them. Bang away at it.
*have no shame in hyping things up a bit – if someone is on the verge of national or regional selection really push this angle.
Honestly, at local level good coverage is very possible because local papers are always desperate for well written and exciting articles… in anything. It just takes a bit of effort.
National press… that is a different matter entirely.
And yes, okay, I am a male writer – but I cannot believe that my successes in getting good coverage local women’s sport were due to my gender.
Football (men’s, Sunday league) is a favourite of my local newspaper too – what’s the women’s sport coverage like in other Sportsister’s areas??
My brother volunteered to write up the local women’s football matches (home games) for the local paper and they were really grateful and used them all.
They don’t actually have many correspondents, they can’t be everywhere, and yes, there’s a bias currently in favour of men’s sports. Maybe you could organise a few people in the league to submit match reports to the paper – they might get published and create more support and if they don’t then you can start a letter writing campaign to the paper to ask why they’re not printing them! I know it’s not ideal but it could be a way to get started.
I certainly think the BBC could do with some constructive criticism over their coverage of women’s sport – would be great if we could see the women’s 6 Nations or some of the cricket (2 outstandingly successful England teams).
Whilst I can be as outspoken as any on the subject of the lack of media coverage in women’s sport, I do agree with ellycope. We have got to come out fighting here and take our own action, rather than just sit back and wait for reporters to notice us. That’s not going to happen.
We all know there is a huge following of women for women’s sports, with many events hitting sell-out capacity crowds. We need to highlight that, and our local matches, again and again and again, and not stop until the media sits up and pays attention.
In my club we used to have one member writing up a report of every match we played and this report was included, without fail, every week in the local paper.
I would suggest that if every women’s sports team nominates a “media expert” (along with their Chair, Club Secretary, Social Secretary and so on), whose job it is to submit reports and write-ups on their club, this will herald the beginning of change.
Really good comments on this, thank you – and I can’t disagree with you at all. I have to admit that the times I’ve written reports myself they’ve gone straight in. You’re right JagsD, it’s a case of getting organised and plugging away. The tips from johnbirch are a good place to start.
I have spent my sporting life feeling disappointed and defensive about the lack of coverage of women’s sport in the media. Throughout my time of studying sport and participating I have been very quick to verbalise my concerns but have done little else to change things. Recent years have seen some great successes for my netball team and I have been shocked by the limited coverage of our achievements. Never once did I question the fact that no one in the club had done anything to promote us! The responses to this article have made me want to change my approach to this problem, so I will be writing regular reports for my netball team next season.