Women’s basketball is on the national stage — sports media is not ready.
On April 17, a columnist with The Indianapolis Star humiliated himself when he told the WNBA’s first-overall pick, Caitlin Clark, to give him her famous heart-hands gesture before proclaiming: “Well, start doing it to me, and we’ll get along just fine.”
I avoided the video out of second-hand embarrassment. When I finally got around to it, I simultaneously rolled my eyes and cringed.
Women and sports media are at odds. Not just athletes, but women within the industry as well.
A study by the University of Central Florida estimated only 14.4% of professional sports reporters across 100 surveyed nationwide outlets were women. Women also made up only 16.7% of editors.
While those numbers have increased over recent years, I’m not expecting an equity revolution.
The Los Angeles Times announced massive layoffs to their sports section and The New York Times shuttered theirs.
Why does this matter beyond just the lack of jobs? Because the pathways into the sports media industry are oriented to the privileged.
An NFL Media reporter came under fire in 2021 for sharing an unpaid internship opportunity. On the surface, I believed the problem was that economically privileged students, generally white men (like myself), were able to land internships at a disproportionate rate because they were able to sacrifice the lack of pay for a competitive position.
Data from the National Association of Colleges and Employers proved me wrong. A larger proportion of unpaid interns are actually women or people of color. The data showed a different problem: People with paid internships performed better in job fairs and received more offers.
That’s a shame. Truly. Because if any industry is flooded with low-quality, unpaid job opportunities, it’s sports media.
While writing about motorsports, I’ve run through the gamut of penniless opportunities that exploited me and my time under the auspices of gaining exposure.
I was privileged enough to have an incredible time working with a major television network. It was paid, and a majority of the interns were women.
One thing that caught my attention was the prevalence of freelance workers. Freelance work comes with less job security and benefits, crucial things for women who want to earn stable income.
Pew Research data shows that women value those attributes more than men do when job-hunting. From my personal experience, a majority of women in the building I worked at were in the minority of salaried positions. Working in a department with mostly freelance employees often resulted in me being in rooms with only men.
I’m not optimistic that we will fix this issue. I’m sure I’m the millionth person to say that layoffs will continue and jobs will become more competitive. In many ways, sports media has become democratized. We couldn’t start newspapers 50 years ago, but today we can all make websites and social media pages.
Only a few of these internet content creators have been able to thrive. Also, with a TikTok ban looming in Congress, many of those creators risk losing everything they’ve worked for.
I call on the media-conglomerate survivors of this tumultuous period to pick up the slack. Provide paid internship opportunities and pathways into the industry for women. Provide the workplace structures that entice women to stay in the business. Make women feel comfortable and welcome to be here.
There are some programs, such as ESPN NEXT, doing a great job by providing paid fellowship opportunities to diverse students. In turn, ESPN has rates of women sports editors, reporters and columnists above the national average. Many of these writers covered a remarkably successful women’s March Madness.
Which brings me back to women’s sports.
Being on press row at a Lehigh women’s basketball game is an isolating experience. Some nights, I’m alone. After a men’s game, the coach often sits through multiple interviews before he gets to talking to me. But sometimes, I get first dibs at women’s games.
My theory is sports media treats the growth of women’s sports as cute and novel. Holding up heart-hands to Caitlin Clark doesn’t show a serious commitment to supporting women’s sports. It’s laughable.
Instead of piling on further, sharing systemically what leads to men populating these spaces and what we can do will hopefully create a more equitable future.
It’ll also give women the respect they deserve.
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