Sports Journalism Today

PDF and text versions of the syllabus are available by following this link. Questions or concerns? Email me.

The Chicago Tribune’s already infamous Chrissy Pronger poster drew the ire of USA Today’s Christine Brennan.
Writes Brennan:
“In 2010, when millions of girls and women are playing sports in this country and around the world, how is it acceptable for a newspaper to resort to tired old sexist comparisons of this sort, trying to [...]

The Chicago Tribune created a Chrissy Pronger poster to poke fun at the Philadelphia Flyers’ Chris Pronger. It got them attention, but was it the right kind of attention?

The Miami Herald’s Dave Barry confirms what we all suspected about Super Bowl Media Day.
Writes Barry:
“This year’s Super Bowl will feature a total of two teams, the Colts and the Saints. This is one of the nuggets of information I picked up on Media Day, which is when all the players are herded into a [...]

Rick Reilly’s latest ESPN The Mag column is up.
He tells us all why he loves his job.
Here it is.
Our favorite line: “Sports is real. It can’t be faked. If you’re Henry Fonda’s son and you want to act, you get to act. If you’re Chelsea Clinton and want to govern, you get to govern. But [...]

The Philadelphia Daily News this morning called Allen Iverson and federally convicted Mike Vick “homeys.” How, in 2009, does such an out-of-touch choice of word get made?

Mike Penner, the longtime Los Angeles Times sports writer, has died. He was 52.
Penner, long known to Times readers for a quarter century for his coverage of Major League Baseball, the Olympics, and other sports, jumped into the national spotlight a few years ago when he announced he was a transsexual and was changing his [...]

There’s a wonderful story today in today’s Minneapolis Star-Tribune by Nancy Barnes celebrating columnist Sid Hartman’s 65th anniversary with the publication.
For the whole story, click on the link. Here’s our favorite part that without a doubt explains how Hartman has survived six and a half decades in this wonderful business.
“Not long ago we launched an [...]

MLB Trade Rumors was back yesterday with another installment of its terrific series, “Trades of the Decade.”
This time they looked at Bartolo Colon to Montreal for Grady Sizemore, Cliff Lee and Brandon Phillips.
At the time it was a bold move by the Expos and their then-GM, Omar Minaya. In hind sight, when you realize the [...]

You know something is a pretty big deal when two columnists at one paper write different takes on the same subject. Such was the case today at the Kansas City Star.
Joe Posnanski (bottom left) and Jason Whitlock took vastly different approaches and — as the nation’s top 1-2 punch usually does — both hit their [...]