“It Feels Like It’s in Our Back Yard”: Centering “Place” in Local Women’s Sports Media Coverage

Abstract

Recent years have seen rising interest in and growing visibility of women’s sports. Concurrent with this “boom” in women’s sports are changing dynamics in the broader media landscape that affect news production both within and beyond the sports department. This study utilizes a place-based approach to understand how the places of news production play a role in journalists’ perceptions of the rising visibility of women’s sports and the resources they encounter when producing women’s sports coverage. Drawing on interviews with 39 journalists working within one state in the Midwestern United States, our findings indicate that the contextual factors specific to the sports and media markets of a geographic region are key to journalists’ approaches to women’s sports coverage. Local success and hometown connections are valuable resources, while journalists navigate barriers to “being there” and structural realignments of newsrooms.