Not Playing Fair: Coverage of Women &

Minorities in the Sports Pages.

By: Fullerton, Romayne Smith, Simile, 14966603, May2006, Vol. 6, Issue 2

Summary of Content Analysis

For the purposes of the analysis, the term 'professional' was applied to any athlete or team whose primary income was

derived from sport. The terms 'amateur,' 'local' and 'community-based sports' were used interchangeably and applied

to any athlete or team who participated in sports but for whom competing was not their livelihood. The only exceptions

were figure skaters who, despite competing for substantial prize money, are deemed amateurs by Sport Canada.

The vast majority of coverage in The Globe and Mail focused almost exclusively on professional sports. This was not

surprising given the breadth of a national paper's audience and the practical problems of trying to discuss local sports

in regions too numerous to mention. This is not to suggest that there was no mention of amateur sport in this venue,

but it was much less significant than professional coverage.

For the metropolitan daily, The London Free Press, the focus on professional sports was shared with local sports at a

ratio of about 70 to 30. For the weekly community paper, the Journal Argus (in St. Marys) the focus was almost

exclusively on local sports. The only time professional athletes were mentioned in the weekly paper was if the story

subjects were originally from the town or the surrounding area. In effect, these were profiles that concentrated on family

history, previous local sports involvement and so forth. Examples of such stories were relatively rare in this analysis.

With respect to types of stories for both professional and amateur across the media, most were hard news or features

that were closely tied to recent games or happenings in the world of sport. This is because sports coverage does not

operate on different criteria from the rest of news: what gets covered is the newest, most up-to-date event (Cumming

& McKercher, 1994; Langford, 2003). But because the news is largely about what just occurred, there was not a lot of

background given in these types of stories, nor was there much room for discussion of what may be deemed 'peripheral'

issues. This type of story coverage gave the impression that scores, standings and outcomes matter most, and the

implications of this style will be discussed later in the article.

In terms of the content for the professional coverage, the most popular theme was winning and losing and the winners

almost always got the most space-more photographs and more copy devoted to their success. The next most popular

themes were money, ownership, coaching and some mention of the types of skills that helped the team win the game.

It also needs to be mentioned that statistics took up significant amounts of space. This reporting of scores in a stand-

alone fashion along with the fact that winning was by far the most prevalent feature of sports news coverage in general,
significantly divorced the outcome from the process. And since, as will be discussed, most of the coverage was of white

able-bodied men, by implication, the sports pages cast this segment of the population as winners.

In terms of community-based sports, the most popular theme was identical to that found in professional coverage:

winning and losing. Next, in contrast to the depiction of professional outcomes, was a description of skills or positions

the athletes played and strategies that aided them to win their game. In fact, for the weekly Journal Argus, game

descriptions sometimes outnumbered winning as the primary theme. The effect was that while winning was obviously

important, being skillful, playing your position and supporting your team was also part of the community news agenda.

In the Journal Argus, there was also a marked difference in how that winning or losing was conveyed. Whereas The

London Free Press tended to frame both its professional and local stories in the same manner, usually mentioning the

score in the first few paragraphs and then outlining what events led to the outcome, the smaller local paper usually told

the story in chronological order with the outcome of the game near the end. The effect of reading about the games in

this manner was that winning was not as emphasized for readers of the Journal Argus and the process of playing was

more evident than when scores were reported first in the stories.

With respect to types of news coverage, after hard news and features, the most prevalent story form was the column.

A seasoned sports writer usually pens these and because he( 1) knows the field so well, he has a large degree of

latitude in terms of subject matter. Columns are not necessarily tied to the most recent events or games, but they tend

to be related to current affairs in the same way as other types of news.

The vast majority of columns in The Globe and The Free Press were about professional athletes and professional

games, so again, they were largely about able-bodied men. For The Globe, the ratio of pro to amateur is about 30:1.

For the Free Press, it is about 25:1. Given that this city paper sells itself in part based on its local sports coverage, it

was surprising that its columnists did not devote more space to commentary on local athletes or teams. However,

columns tend to be critical and while the Free Press sports editor, Dave Langford (2003), said that the paper does not

shy away from negativity in amateur coverage, subconsciously columnists may feel less comfortable commenting on

athletes who are not professionals. Similarly, columnists who are male may not want to express opinions about women

in sports for a variety of possible reasons: men might not feel they share the same game experience as women; men

might not understand the differences between men's and women's hockey, for example; or perhaps the male columnists

might be concerned that if they cover women regularly, they would be pandering to a small percentage of the sports

pages audience since the Free Press' sports demographic is the 18-40-year-old male (Langford, 2003).

Community cheerleading is not the purpose of column-writing any more than it is for news in general (Cumming &

McKercher, 1994; Theberge & Cronk, 1986), so the result may be that it is easier to comment on professional rather

than local sports. Another point to consider is that a large number of columns in The Free Press were regularly imported
from the paper's head office, Sunmedia/Quebecor, located in Toronto, so these common stories must be relevant to all

newspapers in the chain or member group and Sunmedia/Quebecor papers rely heavily on a male, blue-collar reader

(Langford, 2003). Many of the newspapers in this chain run a 'Sunshine' girl-a scantily clad, buxom young woman-on

page 2 as one of the regular features and this is obviously to please the male demographic.

As Creedon (1994), Strutt & Hissey (1992), Theberge & Cronk (1986) and Tuchman (1978) point out, journalistic norms

and conventions (objectivity, news values, source choices, work routines, and constraints like available news hole)

frame information that is presented as news-and sports is no different. This type of coverage does not offer a context

or imply a multiplicity of meanings; rather it implies a particular value system in which women figure marginally and

these journalistic norms "privilege a patriarchal world view" (Creedon, 1994, p.6).

In terms of prevalent themes, the columns, like the hard news stories and features, focused predominantly on who was

winning and on issues related to money, ownership and athletes' skills. While columns were surveyed for the prevalence

of sportsmanship as a theme, most mention only those plays that resulted in scoring or injuries-plays that directly

affected the outcome of the game as opposed to those having to do with fairness, honesty, consideration for other

athletes, and so forth. This lack of discussion on sportsmanship was equivalent in columns about professional and

amateur sports.

The opportunity did exist for these commentary writers to open a larger discussion around issues relating to fair play,

the value of competition and the merits of integration of sport and community. They could also have devoted some

space to covering local wheelchair basketball athletes, or some of the in-house leagues on one of the five First Nations

reservations that are within the jurisdiction of the city newspaper. At the time of this study, these discussions occurred

only rarely and gave the impression that people living in these areas do not play recreational sports.

Summary of Diversity in Media Coverage

For a variety of reasons, media coverage was not as diverse as one might reasonably expect. While many people, like

the students in my 'women in the media' class, may have the perception that contemporary sports coverage is at least

approaching equal, the findings of this small study show that the sports pages are still sexist, class-oriented, largely

white and dominated by able-bodied people( 2). The situation appears to have changed little from Robinson's (1997)

conclusion that this section of the newspaper contains the "pro-male pages" (p. 11).

Robinson (1997) pointed out the little-known fact that women were not always invisible in the sports pages. In her book

She Shoots, She Scores, she referred to what she called "the golden age of women's sport" (p. 9) that occurred between

the 1920s and the end of World War II when she argued that a number of women journalists, columnists, as well as

some of their male counterparts, wrote numerous copy about women in hockey, basketball, softball and track and field.

But this was before "the marriage of professional sport and television virtually eliminated any mention of female
athletes" (p. 9). Since the vast majority of all media coverage today focuses on the world of professional sport, and

because the most popular pro sports (hockey, football, baseball and basketball) are an almost all-male arena, it is not

surprising that hard news, features, profiles and columns from this study focused exclusively on women only 7.5% of

the time. Similarly, women did not appear in as many photographs depicting professional athletes, but their numbers

in that particular sports field are not equivalent. Photos of exclusively women made up 7.2% and photos that included

both sexes made up 1.6%. When women did appear in pro photographs (as they did in sports like tennis and golf), they

were almost as likely to appear only in a tightly framed 'headshot' as they were an action shot. While the numbers of

longer hard news stories were not tabulated separately from the short summaries or 'Briefs,' my impression from

performing this research was that photographs of professional women athletes often appeared in the 'Briefs' section

where there were a handful of words about a player's latest win and a close-up of her face rather than in a longer hard

news piece or a feature. The fact that women tended to appear in head shots rather than action-based photos and their

likelihood of appearing more in the Briefs section of the sports pages could give readers the impression that they are

more to be 'looked at' than admired for their athletic abilities, and their accomplishments are less worthy because

coverage does not approach equality. This finding is consistent with Jones, Murrell and Jackson (1999) in their

examination of American print coverage of women in the 1998 Olympics (where coverage of women is generally more

prevalent). They argued that despite superior athletic performances by women, the print media often de-emphasized

"task relevant aspects of their performance and focused instead on performance-irrelevant dimensions" (pp.189-90).

This type of coverage clearly suggests that women who play and win at sports considered 'male appropriate' pose a

significant challenge to the socially constructed notion of the connections between gender and physical power

(Theberge 1997). My study suggests that perhaps one way the sports pages can limit this threat on a regular basis is

to confine women athletes to smaller stories and to photographs that show only their faces, not their bodies in action.

A future study might engage this question with a larger sample size of more newspapers and a longer time-period for

study.

A specific example of how men and women athletes were treated differently in our coverage made the point relevant

in its small Canadian context: in one particular instance, The London Free Press took virtually identical photographs of

the male and female winners of a local triathlon. The individual shots were clearly focused on the athlete and depicted

Simon Whitfield and Carol Montgomery in identical poses: bent over the handlebars of their respective bicycles,

crossing the finish lines; both photos were tightly framed. Without the cutlines naming the participants pictured, the

shots were nearly indistinguishable. However, the photograph of Whitfield winning his title merited first page above the

fold color treatment (the most prominent and important place in the newspaper) and a tight shot of his face, whereas
the photo of Montgomery's win in the women's competition was placed on the second page of the sports section and

ran in black and white( 3). Obviously men's participation and men's success continued to be what 'really' counts.

Because The London Free Press and the Journal Argus regularly cover local sports, and because women and girls are

participating in sport in ever-increasing numbers (Bishop, 1999; Duncan and Messner, 1998), there is a greater

opportunity for more equal representation in the amateur coverage. However, despite the greater numbers available,

in terms of total number of stories (hard news, features, columns and profiles) devoted solely to women's or girls' athletic

endeavors, the ratio was 3 men to 1 woman. 16.6% of the stories cover both sexes.

Photographs did not suggest much gender equality either. Women and girls were the sole focus of pictures 23.7% of

the time. Again, females were as likely to be shown in a casual pose or a headshot as they were actually playing a

game. So for women and girls who open their national, metro or local papers to see how they are being covered, the

impression they may gain is that the media do not value or are not interested in their 'on field' activities.

Skin Color, Race and Ethnicity

From the perspective of color, there are a significant number of non-white athletes in the professional sports of football,

basketball and baseball. Because these games are regularly broadcast on mainstream television, they do have a profile

in the world of professional sport. This coverage could demonstrate to viewers that in the world of pro sports, color

does not matter, and success-social, economic, athletic-is not dependent on being white.

In terms of print coverage examined here, however, the representation of people of color was woefully inadequate.

While it was difficult to quantify the numbers of non-whites in written texts because the story focus was not usually on

what skin color the athletes had, the photograph tally suggested that there was still a significant inequity in all the

newspapers in both the professional and amateur coverage. While it was beyond the scope of this paper to offer a

percentage of non-white players active in the professional leagues, the fact that The Globe and Mail and The London

Free Press ran photographs of white athletes almost 90% of the time and the Journal Argus ran nearly 100% white,

surely did not reflect the reality of the sample population( 4).

While it is always difficult to quantify news judgment-how editors decide what amount of coverage a piece deserves--

there were stories that appeared in the 'Briefs' section of the newspapers that appeared to be significant enough to

warrant larger stories and full-size photographs. For example, in The Globe and Mail, there were literally a few words

about the fact that tennis star Serena Williams lost for only the fourth time in ten months, but this appeared in the last

slot of the Briefs section( 5). Similarly, The London Free Press ran a very short note about the death of Joe Black, the

first Black( 6) pitcher to win a World Series game, in the Briefs section( 7). This story was not mentioned at all in The

Globe and Mail.

People of colour fare( 8) slightly better in professional photo coverage than in amateur. Of the 979 photos in total, 126

are non-whites. Of the photos of non-whites, pros make up 93.6% and amateurs 6.4%. But professional athletes of

color represent only 11.2 % of the overall total of pro photos. Because a large number of African American and Latin

American men play the tremendously popular sports of football, basketball and baseball, this figure is undoubtedly low,

and it was beyond the scope of the present study to identify numbers or ratios by sport. What was within the purview

of this analysis, however, and was even less acceptable was the extremely low number of people of color in amateur

photographs. For example, in the city of London (population 348 000), there is a First Nations population of about

10,000 people and this is only one segment of the non-white population. But of the 263 shots of amateur players, only

8 or 3% were people of color. Another future project might undertake to study this seemingly underrepresented segment

of the population in amateur coverage in a systematic and rigorous manner.

While the weekly paper, the Journal Argus, obviously focused almost exclusively on local community matters, and the

athletes who were covered were nearly always people who live or have lived in the town, The Globe and The Free

Press did not often note a player's hometown or province unless the piece was a profile of that player and the reason

for coverage was because the angle was 'once-Canadian athlete does well.' As a result, though, it may be difficult for

people to learn about and relate to a successful athlete's 'beginnings' or see her or him as part of the provincial or

Canadian community. It appears that these athletes' backgrounds are subsumed by their allegiance to the team and

implicitly, for the country, for which they play. The references to hometowns that were recorded from The Free Press

and The Globe included a fairly diverse cross-section of east/west representation, but only one was from Canada's Far

North( 9) and none named a First Nations Reserve. While it is true that urban areas often get more coverage in all

aspects of news because of the human resources allocated to cities (Theberge & Cronk, 1986), this does nothing to

ameliorate the impression, in terms of larger community representation, that sports in populated, wealthy urban centers

matter most; the poorer, less populated, and often less white areas of Canada did not get much mention at all, or were

perhaps left to the coverage of the smaller, local papers that are limited in their circulation figures (some First Nations

Reserves have their own papers, for example). It is significant, however, that none of the hard news stories, columns,

profiles or photographs in the Journal Argus, depicted or made reference to anyone who was not white.

Athletes with disabilities were similarly invisible in the news coverage considered. Of the 2308 print news items

(professional and amateur, hard news, features, profiles, columns and photographs) in The Globe, The Free Press,

and the Journal Argus, 7 or .3% made reference to disabled athletes. And in several of these instances, the disability

was a throat problem from which curling skip Bryan Cochrane suffered and the story was about how he used a whistle

to signal his team on the rink. In terms of photographs specifically, there were 2 in total (both in The London Free

Press). The overall impression was that coverage of disabled athletes only occurs when there is a major tournament
like the Para Olympics, or if these athletes do play in 'mainstream' competition, they are noteworthy because, like

Cochrane, they play in a unique way. Otherwise, these athletes did not appear in this news sample. That there in fact

were recreational if not professional games the papers could have covered is undeniable. For example, the city of

London has regular leagues for wheelchair basketball and distance races. There is also a highly attended therapeutic

horse back riding facility on the edge of the city, but the administrator of the program, Kendra Martin (2003), said that

the equestrians are not covered on a regular basis, and the facility is contacted for information about its athletes only

"when the paper is looking for a cute photo of a kid on a horse." The impression from this study's findings was that

disabled people are not depicted as athletes-professional, amateur, or strictly non-competitive, at all.

The Larger Implications of the Study's Findings

News coverage of professional sport is big business and it has become an integral part of the entertainment industry

(Jhally, 1984). The question is, given that most people are not educated about the underlying messages of pro sports,

do they import expectations, behaviors and problematic values from the media coverage to the local playing fields?

While opinion amongst communications scholars varies greatly about the extent and nature of media effects, most

agree with Maxwell McCombs' and Donald Shaw's (1972) assertion that while the media may not tell the public what

to think, they do tell us what to think about. This kind of agenda-setting theory argued for media effects in terms of

awareness (McQuail 1988; Kosicki 1993). Working from this premise, the findings of this study might question if a First

Nations child who plays hockey does not see any other Natives playing hockey, or being successful, does he or she

feel their own dreams are hopeless? Do children with disabilities think that their sport experiences are not as 'real'

because the media does not reify them in their coverage? Do women and girls think their main purpose in sport is to

support, cheerlead, and not challenge male athletes?

The socially responsible idea that news in general and sports news in particular ought to be setting the agenda for

community discussions is, of course, somewhat naïve and idealistic. The purpose of media coverage of professional

sports is to deliver audiences to advertisers (Jhally, 1984; Burstyn, 1999), and mainstream media do not think that

covering minorities in sports will boost their sales. That sports pages are of paramount importance to their papers is

supported by the fact that significant amounts of time and resources are devoted to their provision. Laura Payton, editor

of the St. Marys Journal Argus, cited a 2005 reader survey that showed the sports section is the second most important

reason most people buy the paper (Payton, 2006). Similarly, a recent survey conducted by The London Free Press

suggested that the sports section was the number two reason people cited for purchasing the paper (Langford, 2003).

The Free Press also employs 8.5 people in its sports department-roughly 14% of their news/reporting/copy editing staff

and equivalent to the same percent of their total budget (Ruscitti, 2003).
Coverage of professional sports is obviously part of how papers sell their advertising, and as has already been

discussed, women do not play professional sports in as great a number as do men; however, women and girls do have

the opportunity to be players in the amateur sections of sports coverage. Despite the fact there has been phenomenal

growth of women's sport in recent years (Bishop, 2003; Duncan and Messner, 1998), as this analysis has pointed out,

media coverage remained largely devoted to men and boys. In the context of The London Free Press, the territory was

clearly carved out as 'male'-even beyond the photos, stories and columns themselves. At The London Free Press,

advertisers may choose in which section of the paper their ads will appear. The range of ads in this section of the paper

showed that in terms of audience appeal, the majority were aimed at men: in our sample, there were numerous ads for

beer, cars, sports equipment, hair transplants, strip clubs and race tracks. In several instances, the only photographs

of women in the entire sports section were in ads related to sex products.( 10) So despite growing numbers of women

both on and off the playing fields, the representations remained problematic. As Messner, Dunbar and Hunt (2000)

pointed out, "The significance of this narrow image of women as heterosexualized commodities should be considered

especially in light of the overall absence of a wider range of images of women, especially as athletes" (p.384). If a

woman or girl athlete read these sports pages, her reality would not have been reflected in the ads any more than it

had been reflected in the unequal coverage of gender in stories and photographs. Looking at the issue from a slightly

different perspective and in a different medium, Messner, Dunbar and Hunt (2000) drew a nearly identical conclusion.

They argued that "televised sports, and their accompanying commercials, consistently present boys with a narrow

portrait of masculinity" (p.183).( 11) This kind of coverage also implied to both sexes that some sports are worthy of

coverage and respect--some are considered valid or 'manly,' while others clearly are not (Burstyn, 1999; Messner,

Dunbar and Hunt, 2000). The point was made clear recently, on a popular London radio station, when a DJ commented

that he could not believe that coverage of curling could take up most of the front page of The London Free Press sports

section. He said, "Come on. What about real sports? Curling is just housework on ice."( 12) The implication is obvious:

'real' sports are for men; curling is for women or 'sissies.'

Sports language, because it is not neutral, also created challenges for gender equality. This study found that women

were still being referred to in stereotypical ways, such as when a Globe and Mail column about curlers was titled,

"Diamonds are this Girl's Best Friend." (Weeks, 2003, p. S2). Similarly, women were more often referred to by their first

names than were their male counterparts. This difference made women appear more like girls and demonstrated that

those commenting on them were in positions of authority or superiority. The limited findings of this study concur with

those of Robinson (1997; 2002), Duncan and Messner (1998), Jones, Murrell and Jackson (1999) and Urquhart and

Crossman (1999) who note that women's appearance is still an issue in the sports pages. Shifting the focus from adults

to kids, some journalists might argue that when covering children's sports, it is acceptable to comment on a child's
appearance. But when the reference is not gender-neutral, I would argue that this approach is wrong. For instance, in

a Free Press column about a children's karate tournament, one girl champion was called a "karate cutie" and another's

skills were confined to possessing "bouncing curls" (Coad, 2003, p. E2). The effect of this kind of representation was

that these girls' athletic achievements were undermined and devalued by these patronizing descriptions of their

appearance. In addition, as I have argued elsewhere (Smith Fullerton, 2004), journalists ought to be especially sensitive

in their interactions with, and representations of, children because media professionals do not try to estimate the impact

their coverage may have on these young people. While the idea has not been much explored in journalism ethics

literature, there is a substantial body of work in social science that suggests adult investigators (those conducting

various kinds of research with children) might inadvertently affect how children feel about themselves through the kinds

of questions they ask, the manner in which they treat them in interviews, and the sorts of stories they ultimately write

(Smith Fullerton, 2004).

Robinson (1997) expressed distaste with the formulaic types of sports coverage, noting with sarcasm that while sports

itself is dynamic and ever-changing, its coverage could be derived from a single computer program in which reporters

need only add new names and dates (p. 10). But more problematic than the repetitive form and style of the stories is

that this study found the leads in The Globe and Mail and The London Free Press almost invariably speak of the final

scores, or highlight goals and fights-and divorce the outcome from the process. The essential factors of the plays

themselves become lost because they simply are not emphasized in the way sports coverage is constructed. Often

they are not even mentioned. The effect is that athletes appear to exist in a state of constant goal scoring or fighting;

the more 'mundane' aspects of the games are edited out with the result that readers might expect their sports

experiences to be like the compacted, media-created games to which they are exposed. This observation raises at

least two further considerations; some feminist scholars have argued that women not only construct meaning differently

from men, but also they value different kinds of processes and outcomes (Gilligan, 1982; Witherell & Noddings, 1991;

Belenky, Bond, et al 1997; Belenky, Clinchy et al, 1986). These approaches pointed out that values like winning, and

the individual pursuit of such success, are largely masculine ideals and favoured generally by men; for feminists like

Gilligan, Witherell & Noddings, and Belenky, et al, what ought to be affirmed are values like multiplicity and connection.

They emphasize that in most situations, in contrast to men's individual desires to win at any cost, what women value is

a web of connectivity, not winning at the expense of friendship or relationships in general. The perspective need not be

tied entirely to women either; there are numerous amateur athletes who play games for rewards other than simply

beating the opposing team or individual. These perspectives are simply not validated by the current construction of

leads in either The Globe and Mail or The London Free Press.
Similarly, because professional sports is a masculine realm and the vast majority of stories tabulated in both The Globe

and Mail and The London Free Press were professional, there is an overwhelming sense that the largely male value of

winning at any cost predominates. But amateur coverage could offer a different perspective; sadly, it did not. One word

that was noticeably absent from all the amateur sports coverage was 'fun.' While most people agree that playing sports

at a local level is supposed to encourage physical fitness, well-being, self-esteem, positive community relations, and

so on, it is implied that all these goals are pursued for fun-that everyone has a good time in the process. However, the

term 'fun' appeared only once in all the coverage surveyed, and it was used in a sarcastic, ironic manner. The London

Free Press ran a photo of Bobby Orr and a 'teaser' headline encouraging readers to turn to sports for more. The

headline read, "Hockey Heresy: NHL Legend Bobby Orr preaches making minor hockey fun, of all things."( 13) In a

commentary in the sports section, columnist Jim Kernaghan made it clear that the man who "made all things impossible

seem possible in the NHL," was trying something even more challenging: making kids' hockey enjoyable. And although

this was the point of the story, Kernaghan then chose to devote a great deal of his column space to reminiscing about

Orr's past, his bad knees and his once-great skills. Despite Orr's status as star, and despite promoting fun being the

central reason for his appearance, the news judgment implied that putting fun back in hockey was not enough to warrant

undivided coverage.

Conclusion

The students in my 'women in the media' course who were the impetus for this small study were saddened by our

findings. While they initially believed that the sports pages must be more equal than they were five or ten years ago

(when Laura Robinson wrote She Shoots, She Scores), this limited look at the print media available in the small

southwestern Ontario town of St. Marys suggested otherwise. Because most print coverage in the city and national

paper focused on professional sports and because this area is mostly dominated by able-bodied men, more than half

the population was excluded before the coverage really began. Between the 1920s and the Second World War, women

were competing and participating in many leagues and championships across the country and women sports reporters

enjoyed a devoted following (Robinson, 1997). Now, however, both women reporters and female athletes appear to be

virtually extinct. The impression is false because women and girls are participating in sports in ever-increasing numbers,

but the amateur coverage, taking its lead and format from the pros, is not covering both sexes equally. Despite greater

sensitivity to issues of race and ethnicity that are now part of our legal and moral makeup in Canadian centers both big

and small, the media are not keeping pace with other institutions that insist on equal treatment. Although large numbers

of non-whites play professional sports, photographs were still usually of white players. Moreover, while there are entire

leagues devoted to First Nations sports activities, there was not a single mention of any of these games in the
mainstream media surveyed. Finally, for athletes who face enormous physical challenges living their daily existences,

their invisibility on the sports field is an insult.

On a more positive note, this analysis showed that the sports coverage of the small weekly paper, the St. Marys Journal

Argus, differed from its metropolitan and provincial counterparts in one important way: it offered much less emphasis

on the theme of winning and all that this problematic theme includes and implies. Because the Journal Argus tended

to write its sports stories following the chronology of the games themselves rather than naming in the lead who won

the event, the story form allowed the reader to hear about examples of fair play, good sportsmanship and the success

or failure of the athletes' skills in the broader context of play. Writing about journalism in general, John Miller (1998)

also saw more promising possibilities in Canada's smaller weekly papers than in our larger dailies. In Yesterday's News:

How Canada's Newspapers are Failing Us, he documented the takeover of our metropolitan papers by large, profit-

driven conglomerates and outlined the dangers he believed this posed for readers. In an attempt to recapture how he

believed journalism ought to serve its citizens, Miller returned to work at a small town paper in Quebec for inspiration.

A future study might wish to consider, in the context of sports coverage specifically, how and to what extent the story-

telling style and emphasis of a local weekly paper differs from its larger counterparts serving much bigger and diverse

constituencies.