Sports in African Print Media: Quality Journalism or Toy Department? A Comparison of the South African Results from the 2011 and 2021 International Sports Press Survey

Abstract

Sports journalism has, for some time, been a traditional subject of communication research. However, long-term studies and cross-national studies on sports journalism are still relatively rare. Analysis of sports in African print media is particularly underrepresented in scholarship. This contribution compares and contrasts the quality of sports journalism in the South African print media based on data collected during the 2011 and 2021 International Sports Press Survey (ISPS). Findings from the study largely replicate earlier studies with regards to authorship, placement, primary content, primary actors, journalistic formats, sourcing patterns, and gender representation in sports stories. While there are indications of gradual transformation, in a few aspects of sports journalism sport remains in the margins. Thematically, the media coverage is narrowly dominated by match reports, results, and previews. Moreover, coverage lacks critical journalistic engagement which makes sports pages amenable to ‘soft’ journalism and content that is generally considered to be ‘less serious’, thus lending credence to the thesis that sport is the ‘toy department’ of the news media.

Keywords:

• Print media
• sport journalism
• content analysis
• South Africa
• quality

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

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38 Abisaid and Li, He Said, She Said, 3.

39 Goslin, Print Media Coverage of Women’s Sport, 299-309.

40 Ibid.

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42 Jakubowska, The World of Sports in Newspapers, 47–62; Rowe, Sports Journalism, 385–405; Schultz-Jorgensen, The world’s best advertising agency.

43 Rowe, Sports Journalism, 389.

44 Rowe, Sports Journalism, 385–405.

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46 Ismail and Adnan, Profile of Sports Section and Sports Journalism Practice, 500.

47 Rowe, Sports journalism, 385–405.

48 Ismail and Adnan, Profile of Sports Section and Sports Journalism Practice, 500.

49 Rowe, Sports journalism, 385–405.

50 Ibid.

51 Weischenberg, Medienqualitäten: Zur Einführung, 18.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tendai Chari

Tendai CHARI is a Senior Lecturer and National Research Foundation (NRF) C3 Rated Researcher in the Department of English, Media Studies and Linguistics at the University of Venda, South Africa. He holds a PhD in Media Studies from the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa. His research focuses on Political Communication, Media Representation, Media Ethics, and Communication and Sport. He is the Co-editor of African Football, Identity Politics and Global Media Narratives: The Legacy of FIFA 2010 World Cup (2014, Palgrave McMillan), (co-edited with Nhamo A. Mhiripiri), Media Law, Ethics, and Policy in the Digital Age (2017 IGI Global Publishing) (also with Nhamo.A Mhiripiri) and Global Pandemics and Media Ethics: Issues and Perspectives (Routledge, Forthcoming, 2022) co-edited with Martin. N. Ndlela. Mail: [email protected]

Thomas Horky

Thomas HORKY is a professor at the Macromedia University of applied sciences. He worked as a sport journalist, and as lecturer at the University of Hamburg, the Hamburg Institute of Sports Journalism, and the German Sports University. Horky is assistant editor of Communication & Sport and member of the editorial board of several other journals. He authored several publications in academic journals and books, the latest project was The Digitization of Sports in Mass Media (2019, Herbert von Halem). His main research fields are sports journalism, quality, entertainment and media sports. In 2018, he was invited to the Indiana University, in 2022 he is going to work as a visiting scholar for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Mail: [email protected]

Jörg-Uwe Nieland

Jörg-Uwe NIELAND is a senior scientist at Alpen Adria University Klagenfurt, associated staff member at the Institute for European Sports Development and Leisure Research at the German Sport University Cologne; Lectureships at the Universities of Düsseldorf, Klagenfurt, Salzburg, Vienna. 2014 to 2021 Speaker resp. deputy speaker of the group “Media Sport and Sports Communication” of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Publizistik und Kommunikationswissenschaft (DGPuK) the German Association for Journalism and Communication Studies; since 2012 board member of the Initiative Nachrichtenaufklärung e.V. Mail: [email protected]

Christof Seeger

Christof SEEGER is a professor at the Stuttgart Media University of applied sciences. He is the study dean of the Master Crossmedia Publishing & Management where he developed the major program of sports communication. He researches communication science issues from the media and the transformation into the digital age. Especially the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the communication of sports clubs concluded in a research question. He is co-author of the book Influencer Marketing and starts an editor series of Sport und Kommunikation. Mail: [email protected]

Benjamin Bigl

Benjamin BIGL studied Communications, Journalism, and History at the University of Leipzig where he also received his PhD in 2014. Between 2015 and 2018, he was serving as program director of the double degree master’s program Global Mass Communication/Journalism jointly operated by the University of Leipzig with the Ohio University (USA). Until the end of 2020, he was program manager of the pilot project ‘Media Education Center+’ (MPZ+) in Northern Saxony. As a postdoc, he is currently working in a project on accessible survey research funded by the German Research Foundation at the University of Münster. His research and teaching interests are social science research methods, the use and effects of digital media, game studies, media education, sports, and environmental communication. Mail: [email protected]