Zoom access and sports journalism
A recap of the IACS Summit on Communication and Sport
The first day of the International Association of Communication and Sports annual summit last week took place at Lincoln Financial Field.
The good folks at the stadium gave a group of attendees a lunch time tour of the stadium. Along with a quick stop on the field (impressive) and the media interview room (decidedly less impressive), we got to spend five minutes in the Eagles' locker room.
(Yes, we were asked to not walk on the Eagles logo in the middle of the room.)
Dr. Michael Mirer, my friend and co-author, and I noted the irony:
The research that Mirer and I presented at the conference was directly related to locker room access, or the lack thereof, over the past few years.
We compared NFL coverage in four markets (Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, New York, St. Louis) from 2019 and 2020 to see if there were differences in the sourcing patterns between the last year media members were allowed in locker rooms and the first year of Zoom press conferences. It's part of a larger study we're working on that will include baseball, and is part of our combined interest in the work routines of sports journalists.
We found a few statistically significant differences between stories in 2019 and 2020. Stories in 2020 were an average of 52 words longer. Stories featured quotes from half as many players who weren't quarterbacks (141 other players quoted in 2019, 71 in 2020), and more than double the number of quotes from other media outlets, including advanced analytics sites like Football Outsiders. Each type of story we looked at — game day, postgame, and other — had slightly fewer voices per story.
Those differences were apparent when we did the statistical analysis on them. But on the whole, as you read the stories, there was no real noticeable difference between stories in 2019 and 2020. They didn't feel lacking, they didn't feel different. If you weren't looking for differences, you wouldn't have noticed any.
So what does it tell us about where sports journalism is headed?
Well, it's complicated.
On one hand, relying on Zoom access did lead to generally fewer voices in sports stories. At the same time, the articles themselves felt and looked the same, so maybe it didn't matter that much?
But here's the thing: Locker room access for reporters is not just about that day's story. It's about being around players. Beat reporting is, in many ways, a cumulative job. The conversation you have today helps you break a story two months from now. Tyler Dunne wrote about this recently:
Further, the very nature of covering an NFL team these days makes it easier for teams to conceal information. The last two years, the league used the Covid-19 pandemic as a means to shut down open locker room to the media. Typically, this is where relationships are formed and reporters are able to get answers to the questions taxpaying fans deserve. Zoom press conferences administered by teams are too often tepid, poll-tested productions. For decades, “locker room clean-up day” has served as a perfect opportunity to get those answers on everything from injuries players gritted through all season that nobody knew about to full explanations on what happened in a playoff loss.
When you talk to sports reporters, this has been their top fear in the two years since the pandemic began. That once teams took locker room access away, they weren't going to give it back. Teams and players simply don't have the economic incentives to give the press access because of digital and social media. It's why Adam Silver mused that locker-room media access was antiquated, even as MLB announced that media would be allowed in clubhouses again.
What are research is finding is that Zoom press conferences may not have a dramatic impact on the articles written by sports journalists, they do have a huge impact on how those journalists are able to report on stories.
IACS Conference Highlights
Roxane Coche from the University of Florida presented interesting initial findings that she and an international team of researchers on how journalists in the US, UK, France and Australia view press conferences through coverage of Naomi Osaka’s decision to not do them.
Coche and her team found that British and French journalists recognized the limitations of the press conference but always legitimated them as an authoritative and necessary method of reporting. One of the interesting things they found were the more latent ways journalists did this, whether it was praising a player who is good at press conferences (as a subtle dig at Osaka) or quoting other athletes as saying that press conferences are an important part of their jobs.
This has implications for the research Mirer and I are doing as well. If athletes don’t see the value and importance in press conferences, and yet teams and leagues want to eliminate locker room access, this creates further limits on how sports journalists do their jobs.
Brandon Boatwright of Clemson and Jason Stamm of the University of Nebraska - Lincoln presented research they did on the evolving relationship between sports reporters and college sports information directors. Their interview research suggests that the pandemic has exacerbated the issues of access in college sports. They found that schools used covid as an excuse to deepen the wedge between the team and the media writ large because they (the schools) had a built in excuse.
They also found that SIDs are often playing the role of enforcers, not gatekeepers. College coaches have the power in terms of what kind of access is allowed, with SIDs enforcing those rules (like muting reporters after they ask one question on Zoom, not allowing for any give-and-take).
Access also matters to play-by-play announcers, as Brian Petrotta of Nebraska and Lindsey Meeks of Oklahoma found. They interviewed broadcasters who weren’t traveling with teams due to COVID-19 restrictions and detailed the challenges they faced. Most interestingly was that they are reliant on the director on site, so a road play-by-play announcer is calling the game off the home feed. So in a Phillies-Mets game, a Phillies announcer is watching the SNY feed, which limits what the announcers can see and hampers how they call a game.
Perhaps the most popular topic overall at the conference was athletes and mental health, with a focus on Osaka and Simone Biles. Maria Tsyruleva, a doctoral student at Syracuse University (my alma mater), found that the framing of mental health in Olympic coverage evolved between 2012 and 2020. In earlier games, athletes who discussed mental health were being praised for being strong and tough, no matter what. In the most recent games, they were praised as being strong BECAUSE they are prioritizing their well-being over sports (a further shift in the Sport Ethic), or string because they are open about their mental health issues.
The Other 51
We’ve been on a little recording hiatus due to a crazy winter schedule around here. Things open up a little bit in the spring, so look for new episodes wherever you get your podcasts.
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