The state of the sports press : reflections on an international study

Organized media reporting and commentary on sport began in the eighteenth century in the medium of print, and was supplemented in the twentieth century by radio. For the last halfcentury, broadcast television has been the dominant sport medium, although it can be claimed plausibly that the Internet and mobile technologies are beginning to challenge, if not supplant it (Hutchins and Rowe, 2012). As successive waves of new media technology have emerged and developed, it is conventional to pronounce the “end” of its predecessors. At present, for example,“old” or “legacy” media such as newspapers and television are consistently discussed in the context of crisis, decline or demise, but on closer inspection provide instances of resilience, adaptation, and multi-media user practices (see, for example, various contributions to Franklin, 2009; Katz and Scannell, 2009; Turner and Tay, 2009). Print-based sports journalism, then, remains an important component of the “media sports cultural complex” (Rowe, 2004), albeit one that, like the newspaper itself, is clearly under pressure, especially in mature digital media environments.