Women's college, professional sports coverage still lacking

By Dave Benson of The News-Sentinel

News-Sentinel photo Media exposureThe News-Sentinel devotes 18.3 percent of its sports section to women's sports.

Female athletes and coaches of female teams seem to be happy with the media coverage they receive from Fort Wayne newspapers and television stations.

But should they be so happy? That's what The News-Sentinel set out to determine.

With the help of a questionnaire on the Women's Sports Foundation website that rates coverage by letter grade, The News-Sentinel found that while women athletes are covered by local media, to be equitable, newspapers and television should cover more women's college and professional sports.

The News-Sentinel chose a week out of each season to determine how well local print media cover women's sports. We then checked how Fort Wayne-area newspaper coverage compared to that provided by The Indianapolis Star and The New York Times.

Here's how local newspapers stand:

* Overall coverage of women's sports: The News-Sentinel devoted 18.3 percent of its sports section to women's sports while The Journal Gazette devoted 13.2 percent of its space to women athletes.

* High school sports coverage: The News-Sentinel and Journal Gazette received As, except for the week of Oct. 1-6, when both papers slipped to Cs, mainly because of high school football coverage during that week.

* Women's amateur sports: The News-Sentinel and Journal Gazette received Cs and Ds, except for the week of Oct. 1-6, when college football coverage dominated.

* Professional sports: Both papers received Fs. More than half of the professional sports covered were of men's athletics.

* The News-Sentinel provided the most coverage of women's professional sports between the two papers and that was during the week of July 9-14, when 8.19 percent of space was for women's pro athletics.

"Our coverage of women's sports is broken down into three areas: prep sports, college sports and professional sports," said Kent Kasey, the News-Sentinel's sports editor. "When it comes to prep sports, I believe we do an excellent job of balancing our coverage of boys and girls sports. We try to provide equal and fair coverage to both. But as we move into college and pro sports, our coverage of women's sporting events worsens. We still try to do a fair job of covering local colleges and Indiana, Purdue and Notre Dame. However, we are often at the mercy of wire services, and if they aren't attending those games, we're not likely to get any stories from them.

"On the professional level, we have to look at where the reader interest and popularity lies. It is our opinion that outside of women's tennis, the popularity of women's sports and the level of reader interest just isn't strong enough for us to devote great amounts of space to coverage of those sports. But as any good sports section does, we will continue to monitor the levels of interest and make the necessary adjustments when they need to be made."

In a one-year study conducted by the Women's Foundation of 52 Saturday editions of The Indianapolis Star and The New York Times in 2000, neither paper provided equitable coverage of women athletes. The Star devoted 8.6 percent of its coverage to women's sports, while the Times used only 6.7 percent of its space for women's athletics. Those marks pale in comparison to The News-Sentinel and Journal Gazette.

"We have recognized for a long time the significance of women's athletics and that there is a readership audience that not only exists but also is growing in its thirst for information," Journal Gazette interim sports editor Phil Bloom said. "The Journal Gazette was devoting resources to the coverage of women's sports before I joined the staff almost 25 years ago, and women's sports coverage continues to fill a larger and larger role in our product. Are we as good at it as we need to be? Not hardly, but I dare say we are better than most and at the same time continue seeking ways to get even better."

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Television wants to do better

Local television station managers say they have tried to provide equitable coverage of women's athletics, including high school sports. But there are barriers.

When the Indiana High School Athletic Association initiated class sports in 1997 it became difficult for stations to decide which class event to cover.

"The choice was made since we can't televise them all, we can't pick and choose which games to televise and which ones we don't," said WKJG 33's Kent Hormann, a 24-year veteran of sports broadcasting in Fort Wayne.

"Hilliard (longtime WKJG sports director Hilliard Gates) carried boys sectional, regional, semistate and state, and once the girls kicked in, he had no hesitation carrying their games on television," said Hormann.

That stopped when class divisions were implemented, said Hormann.

Determining whether limited resources would be used to cover Snider's game or Bishop Luers' game, for example, would only anger viewers.

"There isn't a sports guy in town who wouldn't want to broadcast a live boys or girls tournament game, but not in their current format," Hormann said.

An additional barrier is the networks. The networks don't like to have their programs preempted, Hormann said. Stations allow affiliates a limited number of preemption opportunities per year.

The media is not governed by Title IX. Media outlets do not have to devote equal treatment to men's and women's athletics. But local media coverage of women's sports mirrors that of Title IX -- progress has been made, but there is still a long way to go in some areas.