Abstract
The fiftieth anniversary of the Munich air crash recalled journalist giants of the past. But today is a true golden age for football writers, claims a star columnist. Comparing the football writers of today with those of past decades, he writes: "The football specialist writers of today have a desperately difficult job. They are faced with the competition of wall-to-wall, forelock-tugging, blissfully uncritical satellite television coverage. Instead of living in the same streets as the people they cover, the football reporter barely exist on the same planet, since £5m a year buys a privileged place in a gated community or on a country estate. They have to contend with the concepts of product placement and copy approval, as well as the odious machinations of a platoon of grasping agents. By and large, they have little contact with the players unless they happen to write a major star's life story, which itself will be sanitised in the interests of commercial blandness. And yet, in this writer's opinion, they cope superbly; perhaps better than their predecessors could have imagined. Aware that television will inevitably set the tone, they work harder on difficult issues, they explore different avenues, they search for the reality behind the manufactured image."
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.