Examining Gender Equity in Newspaper Coverage of West-Central Ohio High School Basketball Games

Headnote

ABSTRACT.

We investigated the sports coverage of over 300 boys' and girls' high school basketball games between 2000 and 2010 by two west-central Ohio newspapers. Unlike previous investigations on media reports of high school sports, we restricted our sample to actual games and did not include feature articles about individual athletes, coaches, or booster clubs; and we determined article length by counting the number of words used in each article. We found that boys' games received two to three times the length of coverage of girls' games. Media coverage of girls' games was less likely to include a photograph and tended to begin lower on the sports page. We discuss the potential implications of ignoring girls' high school athletics within community media.

Date of Publication: August 2016 OHIO J SCI 116(2): 9-20

INTRODUCTION

With the passage of Title IX legislation in 1972 - requiring equal access to equipment, practice facilities and coaches of the same quality at the K-12 level, and scholarship money proportional to participation at the college level - the number of girls and women participating in sports in the United States has skyrocketed. At the global level, the Olympic Charter of the International Olympic Committee has championed sports participation by female athletes. After adding women's boxing to the 2012 Olympic Games in London, women competed in every sport at the Olympics (IOC 2014).

Parallel to the rise of female athletics worldwide, the sociology of sport has flourished, with numerous studies concentrating on the growing commercialization of sport and the framing and identity of sports based on gender, race, class, and ability. Media is central to how sport is understood and provides a framework for highlighting social and cultural values regarding fitness, health, fairness, and competition. One of the founding figures within sports sociology, Lawrence Wenner, recently argued that "media influenced the doing and meaning of sport at virtually every level" and that "the 'story' of sport, the explanation of its meaning and importance, may be far more culturally significant than the mounting of sport or the results of competition" (Wenner 2015).

Most critical examinations of sports media have been at the collegiate or professional level; however, there is growing interest in media coverage of high school sports (Hardin and Corrigan 2008;...