Restricted accessResearch articleFirst published online 2016-7
Unmasking Title IX on its 40th birthday: The operation of women’s voices,women’s spaces,and sporting mythnarratives in the commemorative coverage of Title IX
As society’s storytellers, journalists often draw upon a standard set of archetypal forms to convey all of the day’s news to their readers. This study considers the practice of commemorative sports journalism, in particular how (and by whom) the stories surrounding Title IX’s 40th anniversary were constructed at two of the nation’s leading sports news outlets. Drawing from a combination of narrative and critical discourse analysis grounded in hegemonic theory, we contend that ESPN and Sports Illustrated shifted away from the traditional battle-of-the-sexes narrative; the end result was a celebratory women-centric model, one that offered progressive ways of understanding Title IX but sometimes fell prey to flaws associated with what White has called the ‘content of the form’.
BedermanG (2005) Manliness & Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender & Race in the United States, 1880–1917. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
7.
BishopR (2003) Missing in action: Feature coverage of women’s sports in Sports Illustrated. Journal of Sport & Social Issues27(2): 184–194.
8.
BrakeD (2010) Getting in the Game: Title IX and the Women’s Sports Revolution. New York: New York University Press.
9.
CampbellJ (2008) The Hero with a Thousand Faces. New York: New World Library.
10.
CareyJ (1989) Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society. New York: Taylor & Francis.
ClotfelterCT (2011) Big-Time Sports in American Universities. Cambridge, MA: University Press.
14.
CoakleyJ (2000) Sport in society: An inspiration or an opiate? In: EitzenD (ed.) Sports in Contemporary Society: An Anthology. New York: Macmillan, pp. 20–37.
DruckerSCathcartR (1994) American Heroes in a Media Age. New York: Hampton Press.
22.
DuncanMC (2006) Gender warriors in sport: Women and the media. In: RaneyAABryantJ (eds) Handbook of Sports and Media. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 231–252.
GramsciA (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks. London: Lawrence and Wishart, pp. 5–23, 229–247.
28.
HalbwachsM (1941) On Collective Memory. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
29.
HallS (1980) Encoding/decoding. In: HallSHobsonDLoweA. (eds) Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972–79. London: Hutchinson, pp. 128–138.
30.
HardinMShainS (2006) Strength in numbers? The experiences and attitudes of women in sports media careers. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly82(4): 804–819.
31.
HardinMLynnSWalsdorfK. (2002) The framing of sexual difference in SI for Kids editorial photos. Mass Communication and Society5(3): 341–359.
32.
HardinMShainSPoniatowskiK (2008) ‘There’s no sex attached to your occupation’: The revolving door for young women in sports journalism. Women in Sports & Physical Activity Journal17: 68–79.
33.
HardinMSimpsonSWhitesideE. (2007) The gender war in U.S. sport: Winners and losers in news coverage of Title IX. Mass Communication and Society10(2): 211–233.
34.
HardinMWhitesideE (2009a) Sports reporters divived over concerns about title IX. Newspaper Research Journal30(1): 58–71.
35.
HardinMWhitesideE (2009b) Through the revolving door: Narratives of young women in U.S. sports journalism. Journalism10(5): 627–646.
KaiserK (2011) Gender dynamics in producing news on equality in sports: A dual longitudinal study of Title IX reporting by journalist gender. International Journal of Sport Communication4: 359–374.
43.
KaneMJBuysseJA (2005) Intercollegiate media guides as contested terrain: A longitudinal analysis. Sociology of Sport Journal22: 214–238.
KianEMHardinM (2009) Framing of sport coverage based on the sex of sports writers: Female journalists counter the traditional gendering of media coverage. International Journal of Sport Communication2: 185–204.
KitchC (2002) Anniversary journalism, collective memory, and the cultural authority to tell the story of the American past. The Journal of Popular Culture36(1): 44–67.
48.
KitchC (2005) Pages from the Past. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
49.
KitchC (2006) ‘Useful memory’ in Time, Inc. Magazines. Journalism Studies7(1): 94–110.
LapchickRBurnettCFarrisM. (2013) The 2012 Associated Press Sports Editors Racial and Gender Report Card. The Institute for Diversity & Ethics in Sport. Available at: http://www.tidesport.org/RGRC/2012/2012_APSE_RGRC.pdf
53.
LuleJ (2001) Daily News, Eternal Stores: The Mythological Role of Journalism. New York: Guilford Press.
PedersenPMKimCHOsborneB. (2009) An examination of the perceptions of sexual harassment by sport print media professionals. Journal of Sport Management23(3): 335–360.
RicchiardiS (2005) Offensive interference. American Journalism Review, January, pp. 58–62.
67.
RoessnerLA (2009) Hero-crafting in Sporting Life, an early baseball journal. American Journalism26(2): 7–33.
68.
RoessnerLA (2013) The ‘ladies’ & the ‘tramps’: The negotiation of a ‘woman’s place’ in the national pastime in Sporting Life. Journalism History39(3): 134–144.
69.
RoessnerLA (2014) Inventing baseball heroes: Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson, andthe sporting press in America. Baton Rouge, LA: The Louisiana State University Press.
SchudsonM (1995a) The Power of News. New York: Guilford Press.
72.
SchudsonM (1995b) Dynamics of distortion in collective memory. In: SchacterDL (ed.) Memory Distortion: How Minds, Brains and Societies Reconstruct the Past. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 348–359.
WhiteH (2009) The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. New York: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
84.
WhitesideEHardinM (2013) The glass ceiling and beyond: Tracing the explanations for women’s lack of power in sports journalism. In: PedersenP (ed.) Handbook of Sport Communication. New York: Routledge, pp. 146–154.
ZimbalistA (2005) What to do about Title IX. In: SimonRJ (ed.) Sporting Equality. Title IX Thirty Years Later. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, pp. 71–76.
