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Articles

It's not just cricket: content in the sports pages of The Hindu and The Times of India

Pages 351-365 | Published online: 20 Jun 2013
 

Abstract

Cricket is India's de facto national sport but the extent of its dominance in the country's broadsheet newspaper organizations has not been clearly stated. The game is more than a major pastime, having been described as a ‘religion’. In this environment, it was important to investigate how much of the newspaper and online sports coverage of two major newspaper organizations was focused on cricket, and how these results compared with other sports. It was also valuable to determine whether there were significant differences in articles published across print and online mediums. The amounts of local and international material in these publications were also considered to discover where the majority of reports came from. The sports pages of The Times of India and The Hindu were examined through a 12-day content analysis of 1814 articles. While cricket was the major sport, it did not dominate at the level expected in all cases.

Notes

1. Majumdar, Soaps, Serials and the CPI(M), 128.

2. Ibid.

3. See Majumdar, Soaps, Serials and the CPI(M); Mehta, “Batting for the Flag”; and Mehta et al., “Bombay Sport Exchange”.

4. In the Indian Readership Survey for the final quarter of 2012, The Times of India had a readership of 7,615,000 and The Hindu 2,164,000.

5. Jeffrey, India's Newspaper Revolution and Ninan, Headlines from the Heartland.

6. Ståhlberg, On the journalist beat in India, 58 and Ståhlberg, Lucknow Daily.

7. Rajan, 21st Century Journalism in India, 9 and Wahl-Jorgensen and Hanitzsch, The Handbook of Journalism Studies, 8.

8. Thissu, Internationalizing Media Studies, 17; Weaver, The Global Journalist; and Löffelholz and Weaver, Global Journalism Research.

9. Weaver and Willnat, The Global Journalist in the 21st Century.

10. Schultz-Jørgensen, “The World's Best Advertising Agency”; Horky and Nieland, First Results of the International Sports Press Survey 2011.

11. Athique, Indian Media.

12. Banerjee, “Asian Media Studies.”

13. See Majumdar, Soaps, Serials and the CPI(M); Mehta, Television in India; Mehta, “India Talking”; Mehta, “Batting for the Flag”; Mehta et al., “Bombay Sport Exchange”; and Rasul and Proffitt, “Bollywood and the Indian Premier League.”

14. World Association of Newspapers, “World Press Trends”; de Souza, “NGOs in India's Elite Newspapers”; and McNair, “Managing the Online News Revolution.”

15. Rowe, “Still the ‘Toy Department’ of the News Media?”; Boyle et al., “Delight in Trivial Controversy?”; and Zion et al., “Sport Media and Journalism.”

16. Cole, “Those Lousy Sports Pages”; Hargreaves, Sport, Power and Culture; Boyle and Haynes, Power Play; Mehta, “Batting for the Flag”; Peltz, “The Sportswriter as Development Journalist”; Rasul and Proffitt, “Bollywood and the Indian Premier League”; and Patching, And in Sport.

17. Boyle, Sports Journalism; Lawe-Davies and Le Brocque, “What's News in Australia?”; and Shoemaker and Cohen, News Around the World.

18. Shoemaker and Cohen, News Around the World.

19. Karan, “What's News in India?” 192.

20. Schultz-Jørgensen, “The World's Best Advertising Agency,” 4.

21. Horky and Nieland, First Results of the International Sports Press Survey 2011, 7–9.

22. Mehta, “Batting for the Flag,” 579.

23. Gupta, The IPL and Indian Domination of Cricket, 1318.

24. Ibid.

25. Mehta, “Batting for the Flag,” 695–699.

26. Majumdar, Soaps, Serials and the CPI(M), 128.

27. Rasul and Proffitt, “Bollywood and the Indian Premier League.”

28. Ibid., 374.

29. Shoemaker and Cohen, News Around the World.

30. The Times of India, “TOI Online is World's No.1 Newspaper Website,” http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2009-07-12/india/28166748_1_comscore-website-newspaper.

31. Indian Readership Survey, 10.

32. The Times of India, “TOI Online is World's No.1 Newspaper Website,” http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2009-07-12/india/28166748_1_comscore-website-newspaper.

33. ComScore, “India's Local News Destinations See Visitors from Outside of the Country Account for a Significant Share of Their Global Audience.”

35. Indian Readership Survey, 10.

36. ComScore, “India's Local News Destinations See Visitors from Outside of the Country Account for a Significant Share of Their Global Audience”; The Hindu, “About Us,” http://www.thehindu.com/navigation/?type=static&page=aboutus.

37. Riffe et al., “The Effectiveness of Random, Consecutive Day and Constructed Week Sampling in Newspaper Content Analysis”; Song and Chang, “Selecting Daily Newspapers for Content Analysis in China.”

38. For an example, see English, Newspapers Versus the Web.

39. Kolmer, “Methods of Journalism Research,” 125.

40. McMillan, The Microscope and the Moving Target.

41. For example, Majumdar, Soaps, Serials and the CPI(M); Mehta, “Batting for the Flag”; and Mehta et al., “Bombay Sport Exchange.”

42. Schultz-Jørgensen, “The World's Best Advertising Agency,” 4.

43. Horky and Nieland, First Results of the International Sports Press Survey 2011, 7.

44. Majumdar, Soaps, Serials and the CPI(M).

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