Sport Media and Journalism

Professor Alan Tomlinson

In this module students will, coterminous with the staging of the London 2012 Summer Olympics, study the emergence of the specialist sporting press in Britain, the development of multimedia-based rivals to newsprint, and the predominant styles of writing about and reporting on sport in the UK and beyond. Particular themes and topics include doping, racism, sexism (in both sport and sport writing), investigative reportage on sports controversies, the media’s obsession with sporting celebrity, and the national and international contexts of reportage of sports mega-events (such as the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games). Set tasks will focus where appropriate upon the Olympics, and students will also have the opportunity to see and experience first-hand, and write about, sports such as soccer and cricket. The module brings a critical and interrogative gaze to the world of media sport, and covers a wide variety of sports beyond mainstream male-dominated team games. The module will appeal to students with interests in cross-cultural studies and globalization issues, as well as those from media studies or specialist social science and humanities disciplines. Teaching comprises 12 lectures and 8 seminars. You must read the selected readings in the module Reader as preparation for those seminars based upon collective discussion of selected sources.

Three books that will be referred to widely for follow-up reading are: Alan Tomlinson (ed), The Sport Studies Reader, London, Routledge, 2006; Rob Steen, Sports Journalism: A Multi-media Primer, London, Routledge, 2008; and Raymond Boyle, Sports Journalism: Context and Issues, London, Sage, 2006. Further sources will be disseminated as the module progresses. It is a fascinating time in which to take this module, with the Olympics and the wider world of international sports events defying the global economic recession of the previous few years.

Bibliography

• Raymond Boyle, Sports Journalism , London: Sage, 2006.
• Rod Brookes, Representing Sport, London: Arnold, 2002.
• International Review for the Sociology of Sport Volume 27 Numbers 304, 2002-special issue on 'Sport in the Media and Cultural Industries'
• David Rowe, Sport, Culture and the Media: The Unruly Trinity, Buckingham: Open University Press, 1999.
• John Sugden and Alan Tomlinson, Stories from Planet Football and Sportsworld: Source Relations and Collusion in Sport Journalism, Journalism Practice Volume I Number 1, 2007.
• Alan Tomlinson (ed.) The Sport Studies Reader, London: Routledge, 2006. Section 4 on the media.
• Lawrence A. Wenner (ed.) MediaSport, London: Routledge, 1998.

Assessment

Assessment comprises a two-hour seen examination paper, which will include two pieces of writing of a journalistic kind, one experiential and one issue-related; a mid-term academic, analytical piece on a selected sports mega-event; and the full-term paper, an academic essay of your choice related to the sport media and/or sport journalism, or a journalistic feature. For students writing or researching on topics of particular currency, there will be the possibility of seeing their work appear in published form.

Lecture Hours: 12 x 1 hour 15 minutes (total 15 hours)

Seminar Hours: 8 x 1 hour 15 minutes (total 10 hours)