IACS 2025: Hot air balloons and the state of sports journalism
A recap of some of the most interesting studies at the Summit on Communication and Sport
Let’s start with the story of Edmond Dehorter.
I learned about Dehorter from my friend Aaron Gallagher at a panel earlier this month at the IACS 2025 Summit on Communication and Sport. As Aaron told us, Dehorter was the most famous sports commentator in 1920s France. He was so successful at using radio to broadcast sports, his print colleagues (who were jealous of his ability to report in real time) convinced the International Olympic Committee to ban Dehorter from entering the venues at the 1924 Oympics in Paris.
To quote Gallagher’s presentation:
Mr. Dehorter did what any self-respecting journalist would do in this situation. He hired a hot-air balloon and took a microphone and broadcast equipment along with him. He flew up over the Olympic stadium and successfully commentated on the sporting events below.
The Dehorter story was a set up for Gallagher’s study on the relationship between journalists and the IOC and was, beyond a doubt, the coolest story I heard at conference.
What follows is a recap of some of the sports journalism-related studies that I found particularly interesting at the 2025 Summit. It’s by no means exhaustive (I didn’t attend every session) and not a judgment on the quality of any study not included. It’s also important to note that many of these studies are works in progress.
Let’s start with Gallagher’s study, in which he conducted 50 in-depth interviews with sports journalists, IOC officials, and Olympics experts. Gallagher looked at how the IOC used what’s called “defensive mediatization strategies,” how sports journalists combat those strategies and the impact they have on the ability sports journalists have to do their jobs.
Defensive mediatization strategies are ones that organizations use when they want to control and avoid media coverage (as opposed to traditional mediatization strategies, which are about getting as much coverage as possible). Gallagher found that the IOC uses a defensive strategy called steering, which includes but is not limited to “media packs (group press releases), leaking information to favourable journalists, hiring in-house journalists, libel letters and using Zoom instead of in-person media events.” The point of these strategies is to uphold the IOC’s image and brand and minimize negative coverage.
What does it mean for journalism? Gallagher found:
Journalists struggle to combat these tactics and are unsure how to do their jobs robustly in an environment which is hostile towards them.
As Gallagher pointed out, we can’t be like Edmond Dehorter and rent hot-air balloons.
Some other studies I found interesting:
A research team led by Daniel Kilvington from Leeds Beckett University investigated the harms felt by sports journalists due to online abuse. The study is part of the work being done by the Tackling Hate in Football program.
Kilvington’s team found that more than half of the members of the UK’s National Union of Journalists (NUJ) and experienced online abuse. While that’s not a new idea, the team examined nearly 50 million Tweets to learn types of abuse and its impact on sports journalists. They found that transfer news is a large source of abuse, with journalists receiving online abuse and death threats for reporting on roster moves. There is also a difference between abuse that is instantaneous and directed at individual, vs. abuse that is cultivated and collective, where a fandom will band together to attack journalists.
One of the quotes from reporters jumped out at me:
Just because my opinion differs from yours, it doesn’t mean I have to die.
The study found that journalists will change how they frame stories or avoid topics/stories that could lead to online abuse. The researchers also found that the 24/7 nature of the job makes the online abuse feel inescapable and overwhelming. As one journalist told them, "Every time I get a negative comment, it chips away.”
Kilvington and his team are focusing their work on making sure sports journalists have institutional support from their news organization. The idea is, you can’t end online harm. That ship has sailed. What news organizations can do is provide clear support systems for journalists when they’re on the receiving end of it.
The research team of Tim Mirabito (Syracuse), John Collette (Gonzaga) and Kevin Hull (South Carolina) presented two studies that looked at the sports hiring practices of local TV stations. Their focus is TV, but the general themes still apply to the print/digital space as well.
Their first study looked at the pipeline from smaller markets to larger markets and the desirability of sports broadcasting jobs. The headline finding of the study is a quote from a Rochester, Minnesota news director who said “Even the smallest sports jobs used to get 100+ applications. Those days are over.” Another hiring editor from Reno, Nevada told them that they used to hire reporters from smaller markets but that now they are hiring straight out of college. What this research suggests is that the traditional career path from small market to larger and larger ones(one that mirrors minor league baseball) is less established as it once was.
The team’s second study examined how news directors view sports stories in local newscasts. They found that, on the whole, local stories are much more valuable to local TV broadcasts, that high school highlights and results are what viewers are looking for from sportscasts. They also found that human-interest stories can draw attention from non-sports fans, drawing on the stories Boyd Huppert in Minnesota is famous for doing.
One of the larger points is that there is a level of saturation of sports news, so focusing on local stories is critical. It’s also a reminder to us in the academy to teach students and reports to tell character-driven stories.
Carolina Velloso from the University of Minnesota presented a delightful historical study on Elaine Kahn, whom Velloso said may have been the first woman sports editor of a collegiate newspaper. Khan attended the University of Pittsburgh from in the early 1940s and served as sports editor of The Pitt News from 1942-1944. Kahn’s regular sports column was named “Kahnotations of Sport” and while there were plenty of pieces in the paper that presented her as a “girls like sports?!?!” novelty act and she did write stories of covering sports from a “woman’s perspective”, Kahn proved herself by covering baseball and other sports. When faced with the critique of having never played men’s sports, she replied “You don’t have to be dead to cover funerals.”
Ryan Broussard of Sam Houston State presented a study that he and colleague Christopher Toula did examining how The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and USA Today framed the PGA Tour-LIV Golf merger. The found five primary themes in their coverage — sportswashing, Saudi business practices, player reactions, the business of golf, and poltiical/legal consequences.
The team found that the business of golf frame was used the most often, but surprisingly the sportswashing theme was the second most prevalent among the elite newspapers. Reporters treated the Saudi’s use of sports washing as a fact, not an accusation.
My friend, frequent co-author and Nando’s lunchmate Michael Mirer (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) presented a study that he and Tim Mcafee of Concordia University did looking at how sports journalists cover athlete expressions of religiosity. While most use of religious language in sports stories is actually secular in nature (having faith in teammates, throwing up a Hail Mary, that kind of thing), Mirer and Mcafee found that when athletes spoke about religion, reporters did not speaking negatively about it. Coverage of the religious expressions of athletes is relatively common and respectful and hands off. Athletes drive the process, but reporters do actively reproduce it.
Finally, a note of correction one year in the making.
After the 2024 Summit in Los Angeles, I wrote the following:
The 2024 Summit on Communication and Sport was probably the last academic conference for a long time with no studies about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. Certainly the last sports media conference without any Travis-Taylor studies.
I was big wrong on this. There were zero Taylor-Travis studies at this year’s IACS. There were, however, two entire sessions dedicated to Caitlin Clark and her impact on women’s basketball and women’s sports.