Published: January 01, 2001
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Women in sports
Measuring progress
Nearly 30 years after Title IX, women no longer have
to change minds to prove they can play - or cover - sports; changing habits,
though, has proven more difficult
By Leba Hertz
Here I am sitting at my computer, fingers flexed, a cup of tea by my
side, notes in plain view, as I begin to write about women's sports and
the role I should take in helping women gain equality in newspaper sports
sections.
My eyes stare at the screen. My fingers stay flexed. I'm ready to start
typing at the keyboard. But then I decide to table this project.
Instead, I'm reading papers, watching television, searching the Internet.
And for what purpose?
To find out why the 49ers are so awful. To see who won the Michigan-Lake
Superior State ice hockey game. To start building background for a Rose
Bowl special section. To see if any players have signed with my favorite
baseball team.
Detect a pattern here? All men's sports ... and this during a week when
teams my newspaper covers have women in NCAA tournaments and highly ranked
women's basketball teams playing. A week when women's coaches probably
believe their teams deserve prominent play but find them relegated below
the fold or inside the section.
So why do I feel conflicted about giving women their due in newspapers?
As the assistant sports editor of the San Francisco Examiner, I am involved
in deciding the play of stories five nights a week. And I have an increasing
appreciation for women sports.
That I struggle with my decisions probably stems from my early indoctrination
and stubborn ambition to succeed as a woman in a men's field.
And in the mid-'70s, when I started my career, the only game in town
was men's sports - or so we thought.
Actually a revolution in women sports had already begun, with the passage
in 1972 of Title IX, the federal law designed to increase the number of
women playing sports, and television's decision to showcase a pixie gymnast
from the Soviet Union named Olga Korbut.
"The general feeling pre-Title IX was there wasn't much aggressive activity
by newspapers to cover sports because women sports were much more
minimal," said New York Times sports editor Neil Amdur, who started covering
women sports, especially tennis and the Olympics, in the 1960s. "At the
1968 Olympics, the longest race for women was the 800 meters. There were
fewer sports, and what we now consider the major events weren't even considered
until 1972 with Olga Korbut in Munich."
Examiner senior writer Dwight Chapin had a similar experience when covering
the Munich Games for the Los Angeles Times.
"I get a call from my sports editor who said do something on Olga Korbut,"
Chapin said. "My reaction was 'Who is Olga Korbut?' I had no idea. He wanted
a story, but it turned out her competition had ended and she had gone back
to Moscow."
Getting started
As the media began to take a serious look at female athletes, I still
had dreams of covering baseball and becoming the female Red Smith, the
Pulitzer Prize-winning sports columnist for The New York Times.
During my years at the University of Michigan and Missouri's school
of journalism's graduate program, I had a taste of covering big time sports
for the student newspapers and found it exciting to be around the nation's
top media and athletes. Some professional teams were admitting women into
the locker room. When The Ann Arbor (Mich.) News offered me a position
as a part-time reporter in 1975, I was ecstatic.
Then I found out what the expression "paying your dues" meant. Did I
get to cover my old beats? Michigan football? NCAA basketball? No, my first
assignment was a wrestling meet, followed by more minor men's sports. Then
my sports editor assigned me to look at the Michigan women's swim team,
which finally had some full scholarship athletes in the program because
of Title IX. Women's sports?! My first reaction was, "Are you kidding?"
Then I realized I needed to gain respect and build up a resume if I wanted
to continue in this field.
Some of my contemporaries decided writing about women athletes was the
way to advance in the 1970s.
"I started covering women's sports because no one wanted the territory,"
said Seattle Times sports editor Cathy Henkel, who started as a reporter
for The Register Guard in Eugene, Ore. "I started covering elite gymnastics
and AAU track, which is huge in Eugene. It got me a ticket to the Olympics."
Julie Ward, deputy sports editor of USA Today, described covering women's
sports in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a new frontier.
"I actually was a political science major and was considering a career
in politics," Ward said. "But I had done some freelancing and then I started
writing sports for the Belleville (Ill.) News Democrat. I covered women
sports by choice because it was new. Title IX had just been enacted.
"Schools were finally providing opportunities for women athletes. One
of the first I wrote about was Jackie Joyner, who ran AAU track in high
school in East St. Louis. I wrote a column and felt very strongly that
if I wasn't an advocate for women sports, who would be."
Added Henkel, "I enjoyed covering women's sports. You didn't get all
the sports cliches and the women were so interesting and enthusiastic.
It was intriguing."
A rocky road
I enjoyed writing about the Michigan women's swim team. Yet, I still
was determined not to be associated with a women's ghetto. I pursued my
master's degree to hone my skills. I thought it was tough for a woman who
wanted to cover sports at Michigan; I was in for culture shock at Missouri.
A woman covering men's sports? Unheard of. A woman sports writer? Maybe.
I persisted and ended up covering the Kansas City Chiefs in 1977 for
the Columbia Missourian. But I also had a second job. I worked for the
University of Missouri sports information department, disseminating information
on women's sports to media outlets throughout the state. Once again, I
was caught between two worlds. The glamour and excitement of a professional
sports team and the burgeoning women's department, where stats were kept
haphazardly.
I remember when I was an official scorer at a softball game and ruled
a ball bobbled at second was an error. One of the sports information directors
leaned over and said, "Make that a hit." "But it was clearly an error,"
I said. "I know," replied the director, "but make it a hit anyway. We want
to make these girls look good."
I scored it a base hit. I called in the results and the newspapers gave
it, at the most one graph, some just put it in agate. I wasn't quite ready
to tell these newspapers that women deserved more than one graph.
Getting past 'Girl Talk'
Getting ready for the real world, I sent job applications all over the
nation. I envisioned editors saying "Hey, here's a woman and we need a
woman on our staff."
Certainly, many newspapers were hiring women to cover men's sports,
but there was still a hostility in bringing women to almost all-male staffs.
I even had one sports editor reply that he already had a woman on his staff
and had no room for another.
I finally received two job offers. One was to write a women's sports
column in Abilene, Texas. When I told the editor I wanted to cover men's
sports, he was befuddled. The other offer also was covering women's sports,
but this was at the prep bureau office of The Star-Ledger, Newark, N.J.
I could save money living at home in New Jersey so I accepted the job and
hoped it would be a stepping stone.
I got caught up in the world of prep sports, writing a feature every
day on a girl athlete, putting together all-state teams. The newspaper
had expanded its prep section. The three women hired to cover just the
girls even got to share a sports column.
We brainstormed for weeks on a name and decided on "From the Sidelines."
So the first column comes out and it says "Girl Talk." To say we were appalled
was an understatement. After talking to the editor who selected "Girl Talk,"
we compromised on "Girl's Insight."
Although the girls were getting coverage, the emphasis still was
on the boys, especially football and the male writers were given more chances
for job advancement. When a men's beat came open, I approached one of the
editors about taking on the added responsibility. I got the job, and once
again I relegated women's sports to the bottom of my list.
Even Henkel, who loved covering women sports, jumped at the chance to
cover Oregon State men's basketball, at the time a perennial powerhouse.
"Oh yeah, I'll be there," Henkel said about accepting that beat. "I
got the chance to travel all the time. I couldn't travel with the women's
teams unless it was a tournament at the end of the season."
Mary Schmitt Boyer, who has primarily covered male sports in her career
dating back to the 1970s, never considered covering women.
"As a young writer coming up, honest, there were not many women's teams
being written about," said Schmitt Boyer, the Cleveland Cavaliers beat
writer for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland.
"I wanted to be a basketball writer, and in the 1970s, that meant men's
teams. Through the 1980s, even when women were covering women's sports,
it wasn't even in my consciousness to leave men's sports."
Following a new path
I wanted my male peers and sports editors to accept that I could equal
their tasks, but my career at the Ledger reached a dead end. I received
an offer from The Detroit News to be a copy editor, with a possibility
of becoming a writer in a couple of years.
Becoming a copy editor would change my career. I realized I never would
get that big beat but could keep my pulse on the predominantly male sports
world by plying my trade as an editor and have a better shot at advancement.
Perhaps this was when I should have started asking, "Hey, where are
the women sports stories?" But I was so excited to be back in the mainstream
that I simply never thought of promoting them.
I can't recall much about women's sports in the early and mid-1980s.
With stints at Newsday in Melville, N.Y., and The Oakland (Calif.) Tribune,
I was more concerned with women getting employment in newspapers than reading
about female athletes.
Like so many people, the only time I thought about them was when the
Olympics or major tennis tournaments came around.
Sure I knew who Billie Jean King, Chris Evert, Dorothy Hamill and Nadia
Comenici were, but ask me who won the women's national basketball championship
and I wouldn't have known.
Taking notice
I also believe the 1980 U.S. boycott of the Moscow Olympics hurt women's
sports. In those days, the Olympics was one of the few times the media
showcased women.
But in 1982, 10 years after the passage of Title IX, something very
significant occurred. Women's basketball, which had started national championships
in 1972 under the auspices of the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics
for Women, had its first NCAA national championship in Norfolk, Va.
Illinois women's basketball coach and former Olympics coach Theresa
Grentz, who played at famed little basketball power Immaculata in the 1970s
and became the first full-time women's basketball coach in the nation when
Rutgers hired her in 1976, has seen women's sports evolve to big-time status.
When she took over at Illinois in 1995, attendance was low, yet today
the games almost always sell out, and in 1998-99, the women set a school
attendance record.
"It's not so much coverage as it is marketing," Grentz said. "The key
is a good product, and that product is winning. When I came to Illinois,
we weren't getting much coverage from the Champaign newspaper (where the
university is located).
"So I said, 'screw it' and went up to Chicago and the two newspapers,
the Tribune and the Sun-Times. They both were enthusiastic, and the Champaign
newspaper started getting scooped. There's a beat guy there now."
Grentz said the turning point for her program probably came in her second
year right after New Year's. Members of the Polar Bear Club (whose members
swim outside in freezing temperatures) were listening to Grentz on a radio
show and started calling and telling her to jump in the water.
"First I said, "Get the heck out of here'‚" Grentz said. "But then I
told them that if we sell out the Michigan State and Ohio State games,
I'll jump into the lake. The first game wasn't sold out but close. And
we win. The second game was also close to a sellout and we win again. Those
two wins set us on a course to win the Big Ten Championship and the program's
success."
And Grentz made the jump.
"When I first made this boast, it was 58 degrees. The day I had to jump,
it's 14 degrees in the lake. They have fire fighters out there to cut the
ice. ... I went in up to my knees and I'm thinking this is the most stupid
thing I've ever done in my life. I'll never do it again. But then I thought
again. It was for a cause and it all worked out."
AWSM changes debate
As the mid-'80s approached, I took a job at the San Francisco Chronicle,
working my way from copy editor to deputy sports editor in 1988.
That year the Association for Women in Sports Media was founded. The
organization's purpose was to support women who work in the sports media
- women's coverage was not part of the agenda when AWSM held its first
convention in Oakland. Rather, the major issues included equal access in
the locker room, equal pay and sexual harassment.
But as the organization evolved, its members internally debated about
AWSM's role in women's sports.
"I used to think it was compromising our objectivity to promote the
coverage of women sports," said Schmitt Boyer, a former AWSM president.
"I sort of changed my mind at the AWSM convention in San Francisco (in
1994) when a number of women athletes approached me about how much they
look to women writers as role models. I never envisioned myself that way.
I was that much more sympathetic to what they were looking for."
Campaigning to cover the big game
I still wasn't tuned into women's sports in the late 1980s, and I must
admit the Chronicle was not aggressive in covering them (except the Olympics).
Unbeknown to me Stanford, one of the schools the newspaper covered,
was building a powerhouse in women's basketball. Many papers in the area
began taking a serious look at the team, including the Examiner.
"I started covering women's basketball in the late 1980s when the Stanford
women's team was starting to make noise," Chapin said. "It became full-time
in 1990 when they won the national championship. I was skeptical when I
got the assignment. I didn't know if the sport would work out. But I watched
it grow into a wonderful sport."
Indeed, the Stanford women's team in the early '90s was outdrawing the
men's team. But still the Chronicle wasn't paying much attention. I, the
only woman editor in the sports department, argued that readers were interested
in this team and their superiority and attendance figures merited serious
coverage.
I remember championing the women for the sports section cover instead
of an NHL game that had no importance whatsoever. A win gave Stanford a
Pac-10 championship. The men thought I was nuts.
Suddenly I was this big proponent of women's sports, and was comfortable
supporting its cause. I made my case and the story went on the cover. Other
newspapers in the area also played the Stanford women on the front.
"Back at Immaculata, Philadelphia had two newspapers," Grentz said.
"At this time (early 1970s), the pro sports teams were down. The team that
was winning was Immaculata. It was a story, but we made it a story by winning."
Perhaps, like Grentz, I have a cause too. I think of myself as a fair-minded
journalist. If the women are the best story, go with it. That said, have
I become an advocate? Yes and no.
Changing for the better
One thing that many people don't grasp is the expansion and growth of
sports nationwide and how that affects what goes on the cover of sports
sections.
"I think it's great there are still people who feel we do not do enough
for women's sports," Amdur said. "But it's not because women are second-class
that they're not on the cover. Newspapers are essentially operating with
the same space but with many more sports, more professional teams. As a
result the decisions about what to put on the cover have left a news hole
where many things tend to be minimized."
Amdur points out that many sports that used to get serious coverage
- track, boxing and horse racing - are now receiving less regular attention.
I have become more attuned to all sports. Whether it's because I have
to keep daily tabs on what's happening everywhere or because of cable television's
round-the-clock sports menu, I have become a sports junkie. The attack
on figure skater Nancy Kerrigan before the 1994 Winter Olympics and the
remarkable success of women in team sports in Atlanta in 1996 increased
my interest in women's sports, particularly the Olympic variety.
And even the men are beginning to understand why we should be interested.
"I was at the last two women's Final Fours (in basketball)," said Ward,
"and you look up and down press row, there's a pretty representative group
of men sitting there."
Chapin says most of the Stanford women's beat writers are men, but he
acknowledges the columnists at games usually are women and finds this a
problem.
"One of the things lacking is male columnists," he said.
"To not write about different sports is cheating your readers. Men need
to expand their scope to women sports. If you're a good columnist, people
will read you, no matter what you write about. I think male columnists
need to take a more encompassing view of sports and not concentrate on
the predictable events."
Women's sports are playing an important role in improving the quality
and diversity of newspapers. But I still keep in perspective that the majority
of readers want, first and foremost, male sports.
"I'm a nontraditional reader," Henkel said, "but I have to take
a reality check that most of our readers are still men and want to read
about men's sports."
My own habits
I believe I have achieved a healthy balance on which women's sports
we should emphasize and which deserve more coverage. This last year was
a milestone.
The U.S. women's soccer team, for years relegated to a brief in most
sports sections, not only made a statement for women and minor sports,
but made the front page.
The NCAA women's basketball finals broke attendance records again.
The Williams sisters are making tennis interesting again.
So as I begin 2000, I admit I'm still paying more attention to football
and baseball. But I also find myself checking the women's Top 25 basketball
results and keeping track of women who may be headed to the 2000 Olympics.
Maybe it's the fashion to cheer for women sports. I hope it never goes
out of style.
Hertz is assistant sports editor at the San Francisco Examiner and
president of the Association for Women in Sports Media.
