Boston — along with the other northeastern megalopolises of New York and Philadelphia — has long had a reputation of hosting an aggressive and relentless sports press corps that can be too intense for the player or coach who can’t handle the pressure cooker. And that’s certainly true for extensive on-the-field coverage and sharply opinionated column writing.
But there are also stories simmering in the back of the clubhouse, away from public view.
The furor last fall surrounding Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein’s sudden (and temporary) departure from the team triggered an intensively competitive media war to try to make sense of that turn of events. And in that context, the 17 percent stake in the Sox owned by Globe parent the New York Times Co. proved to be an extremely contentious subject.
(There are a number of media companies and moguls, ranging from the New York Times Co. to the Tribune Co. and from Rupert Murdoch to Ted Turner, that have held ownership stakes in professional-sports franchises — a reality that complicates coverage issues even more.)
But for all the attention paid to the Sox during the season, there wasn’t much reporting that foreshadowed the problems between Epstein and team CEO Larry Lucchino, which apparently triggered the rupture that seemed to catch everyone by surprise.
Among the analysts interviewed for this story, there was broad agreement that such a front-office rift — even if the parties want to hush it up — is legitimate fodder for sports departments.
“You have to [cover it] because it affects the way [the general manager] does his job,” says Frank Shorr, a former Channel 7 sports veteran who teaches sports journalism at Boston University.
“That’s an absolute story,” says Padwe. “That’s a business story. It’s a baseball story. It’s everything.”
A more sensitive question is when and if an athlete’s off-the-field issues become worthy news subjects. In this town, for example, rumors have long swirled that one player’s trade demands may have something to do with domestic issues.
That, of course, raises the thorny issue of when sports journalism should cross that public-private demarcation zone.
Five years ago, the editor of the gay-and-lesbian magazine Out announced that he had had an affair with a well-known but unnamed East Coast–based player, triggering a frenzy of rumors and gossip about the man’s identity. The editor raised the important issue of homophobia in sports, but sports journalism has been loath to go there.
And while some of Red Sox reliever Keith Foulke’s poor performance last year was widely attributed to personal problems, the media didn’t conduct the kind of thorough excavation of those problems that might have occurred with another public figure whose work was being monitored by millions of people daily.
And with hindsight, could more open coverage of Yankee great Mickey Mantle’s proclivity for very hard partying have been justified by its connection to his injury-plagued career?
Poynter’s Steele says that when it comes to sports coverage, the presumption of privacy should no longer be a given.
“If an athlete’s [private life] is having an impact on that athlete’s professional performance, that to me is a legitimate story,” he says. “By choosing to be a performer in the athletic arena, you give up that zone of privacy.”
Sports writing is Fun; News Breaking is Hard
The biggest impediment to more-aggressive sports coverage may be the idea that at a time when many media outlets are tightening belts and losing audience, sports certainly seems to sell.
A 2000 readership survey by Mediamark Research found that 43 percent of adults (including 58 percent of men) read the sports section of their daily papers, making it the most popular attraction behind the main news section. In Boston, the ongoing battle between the Globe and Herald sports sections is now the most competitive battlefield between the two rival dailies.
When ESPN was founded in 1979, it was considered a bold experiment. Today it is a media conglomerate unto itself, with a web of TV networks ranging from ESPNEWS to ESPN Classic, a radio operation with about 300 full-time affiliates, a potent online presence, and a magazine that is pushing 2 million in circulation. (The network says that up to 88 million people a month watch its signature news show, SportsCenter.)
In the Boston radio market, the big commercial success story has been sports talk station WEEI. In a recent Globe piece noting that the station has led the ratings in the crucial 25–54 demographic for seven of the past eight quarters, Talkers magazine publisher Michael Harrison described those numbers as “nothing short of phenomenal.”
