Sports and Society

Newspaper Coverage Analysis

1. What kinds of sports receive the most mention on the front page of the newspaper?
2. What sports receive full articles instead of just "score listings" or results?
3. What teams receive coverage, and how is that coverage distributed?
4. Are there any noticeable differences in how female and male reporters cover sports? (Consider, for
example, the types of sports covered and the amount of space a reporter/columnist receives.)
5. Are the amounts and quality of coverage divided equally/fairly between female athletes and male
athletes?
6. What is the proportion of coverage received about professional sports compared to college sports,
high school sports, and community leagues?
7. What receives pride of place in the sports section? That is, what stories make the front page?
8. Compare the coverage of men’s sports and women’s sports.
9. What types of advertisements are in the sports pages?
10. How much coverage is given to out of town sports teams?
11. Are sports stories always positive? If not, how are negative aspects of sports treated?
12. Do journalists try to vilify athletes?
13. Are there more stories about the purely sports aspects of sports, or more about the business of
sports?
14. How much emphasis is placed on the salaries of the athletes?
15. In what ways are athletes described? What kinds of stories are written that focus on the athletes
rather than on games played?
16. How much do the coaches get mentioned? What is said about coaches?
17. Are issues such as race addressed in the sports pages? If so, how?
18. What are front-page stories in the written media compared to leading stories in the television
media?
19. What sorts of opinion pieces appear in the sports section? How do they relate to the rest of the
stories?
20. Why does nearly every paper include the daily lines?
21. Do international sports get any attention from the local media?
22. Is it possible to ascertain any biases on the part of sports reporters or columnists?
23. Is the focus of the article always on the winner?
24. Are any of the columns written by current or former athletes? If so, how do they compare to other
columnists?