What is Sports Journalism? How COVID-19 Accelerated a Redefining of U.S. Sports Reporting
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2022
Keywords
Metajournalistic Discourse, Sports Journalism, COVID-19, Definition Making, Discourseanalysis, Lifestyle Journalism
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2022.2117237
Abstract
The coronavirus pandemic placed sports journalism in a vulnerablestate, which necessitated a reconsideration of what it means toconduct sports journalism. Through the theoretical framework ofmetajournalistic discourse, the present study reports on a two-step discourse analysis of metajournalism on U.S. sportsjournalism (n= 166) published during the coronavirus pandemic.We argue that journalism vigorously defended the sportsjournalism subfield in the expectation that it would once againbecome newsrooms’economic engine. While historicallydenigrated as the“toy department,”sports journalism herereflected on this designation in a positive light: after all, aren’ttoys what bring people together? Even without live sports, sportsjournalism was still perceived as a specialty emphasizing socialcohesion.
Rights Information
Was this content written or created while at USF?
No
Citation / Publisher Attribution
Journalism Studies, v. 23, issue 14, p. 1860-1879
Scholar Commons Citation
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journalism Studies on 6 Sep 2022, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/1461670X.2022.2117237.
