These are darkish days for journalism, as soon as thought-about the “Fourth Estate” of American democracy, so named due to journalism’s function in advocating for residents, framing political and social points, and holding the federal government to account on behalf of its individuals. Lately, it appears there are two sorts of journalists, those that have been laid off and people who will likely be laid off within the close to future. Every day many people get up questioning which group we’ll discover ourselves in. The extra expertise you’ve got, the extra seemingly you’re to seek out your self escorted to the exit by safety, in favor of somebody who prices much less to make use of.
Final week, Sports Illustrated laid off its staff — some instantly, whereas others got a 90-day window — making it seemingly we’ve seen the final chapter of the best sports activities outlet to ever exist. Yesterday, the LA Times laid off 115 journalists, together with their Dodgers’ beat reporter, Jack Harris. Which is smart, as there’s nothing newsworthy taking place with the Dodgers in 2024 in any respect. By the way, a Google seek for “SI layoffs” additionally took me to tales on main layoffs at SI in 2016 and 2019. Again in July, the New York Times disbanded its total sports activities desk, leaving 35 journalists and editors to seek out different work. That very same month, ESPN laid off 20 of its high-end on-air expertise, together with skilled sideline reporter Suzy Kolber. I’m proud to say I briefly labored for the Chicago Tribune, a childhood dream of mine, within the midst of ongoing layoffs of journalists that by no means actually appeared to cease. Every day I’d are available in and see beforehand cluttered desks wiped fully clear, as if nobody had ever labored there. As soon as, a colleague who sat throughout from me left to attend a gathering and by no means returned. It’s an unsettling strategy to stay your life, by no means understanding when the ax is coming for you. 9 years later, practically everybody I knew on the Tribune, from the newsroom to the social media staff, is gone.
The decimation of media, and sports activities media particularly, has largely gone ignored by the lots, who’ve been largely unengaged within the labor battles happening in newsrooms throughout the nation. There was a time, as fellow reporter Maggie Hendricks as soon as mentioned, when being a journalist was a great, middle-class job. Dependable, regular, good job safety, because the information by no means stops. Now, after many years of demonization by politicians and being mined for elements by non-public fairness, some journalists across the nation lately bought a increase as a result of their wage didn’t meet the minimal wage threshold legal guidelines in locations like New York Metropolis and L.A.
Many Individuals don’t care concerning the lack of journalists overlaying important beats, like local weather change and the rise of extremism in America, so it’s arduous to argue that they need to care about sports activities writing. However sports activities in America is the place we work by our social and racial points, oftentimes earlier than the remainder of society does. Jackie Robinson built-in baseball in 1947, at a time when a lot of the American South was nonetheless shrouded underneath the bloody curtain of Jim Crow legal guidelines. In his glorious guide “We Will Win the Day,” Professor Lou Moore talks concerning the function Black sportswriters performed in pressuring baseball to desegregate, and the way, in flip, sports activities writers have been in a position to make use of Robinson’s debut in MLB to stress native college districts to finish their insurance policies of racial exclusion, as effectively.
“In St. Louis, the unheralded Black sportswriter Arthur Kirk led the crusade to integrate high school sports at the public-school level,” Moore writes. “In the fall of 1948, right after the London Olympics ended, encouraged by the level of celebratory democracy bestowed on Black Olympians, Kirk used his editorial column to challenge the Black community to battle with him in his fight with Missouri’s Jim Crow athletic board…By 1952, the city had integrated all of its high school sports programs and offered integrated championships in baseball and track and field.”
In 1973, lengthy earlier than the times of cable TV and on-line streaming, SI performed a serious function in overlaying The Battle of the Sexes, the televised tennis match between Billie Jean King and ostensible sexist Bobby Riggs, which magnified an ongoing nationwide dialogue about ladies’s rights and sexism within the office. Muhammed Ali appeared on SI’s cowl 40 occasions, together with 5 occasions between 1967 and 1971, when Ali was exiled from boxing resulting from his standing as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam Conflict. In the summertime of 2020, when athletes throughout the nation took a stand for racial justice, it was the sports activities writing group who was tasked with overlaying it, together with the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream, who banded collectively, advocated for then-candidate Raphael Warnock, and flipped the US Senate blue. That, in fact, was across the similar time the entire league locked arms and took a knee for Breonna Taylor.
In America, sports activities have by no means been “just sports.” Sports activities have at all times been inherently political, encompassing points like police brutality, violence towards ladies, racism, sexism, labor rights, transphobia, and homophobia. Points that appear bigger than life once they contain movie star athletes, however are the identical ones we discuss round our dinner tables at residence. The combat for impactful sports activities writing, and the combat for impartial journalism, is nothing lower than the combat for the soul of America. We can’t promote out significant journalism for pageviews. The impression sports activities journalism has on our nation can’t be measured in clicks and advert income, or transformed in slide reveals, merely to earn more money for non-journalists who would purchase and promote us all for elements tomorrow if the revenue was sufficiently big. Sadly, we’re already on our means there.
