Women's sports coverage investigated, explained
On Nov. 7, for the Homecoming edition of the Wildcat, the sports desk organized a Wildcat alumni "staff picks" feature in which ex-Wildcat staff members made UA sports predictions. The success of the 2003-2004 women's basketball team was one topic. Two of the four picks included derogatory comments about the team:
Women's basketball head coach Joan Bonvicini contacted the Wildcat to express her frustration and offense to the comments. And rightfully so.
"The comments were cheap shots, and should not have run," said Jeff Sklar, Wildcat editor in chief.
While the Wildcat regrets printing the tasteless staff picks, the concerns of the women's basketball team bring up interesting questions regarding coverage of women's sports in general. After years of fighting to get Title IX passed in 1972, women are still fighting the battle of athletic gender discrimination in mainstream culture and in the media.
The mission of the Wildcat sports desk is to supply our readers with quality sports news. The role of any newspaper is to provide its readers with the information they want to know about. This presents a fine line between giving women's sports fair coverage and serving the interests of our readers.
"While I don't necessarily think it is right, there is a difference between equal and fair coverage," said Brett Fera, Wildcat sports editor. "As long as there is a demand for a certain sport's coverage, we will cover it whether it is men's or women's."
It is no secret that most readers in the fall semester want football, men's basketball and more men's basketball.
Interested to see if the Wildcat, overall, discriminates against women in its sports coverage, I looked back through every issue from Oct. 1 to Nov. 19, and this is what I found:
The number of stories - not including briefs or the "UA Roundup" - is fairly equal considering the football and men's basketball seasons overlap this time of year - not to mention the Icecats. This fall, volleyball has seen the most consistent coverage in years, which accounts for much of the women's stories. Senior sports writer James Kelley has worked his reporting butt off this semester, sometimes covering more than one women's sport in a weekend.
The most important news of the day is what gets placed on the front page of the Wildcat. The one front-page women's story was about Jacquenese Amanda Price, a UA employee who was retiring from the Human Resources department and had been on the pomline in the '70s. For some, the claim that the story counts as women's sports coverage may be a stretch.
But the fact of the matter is that unless the soccer, volleyball, women's basketball or any other fall women's team wins the national title or makes mainstream news (or a player commits a crime), there is little the team can do to make it on the front page of the Wildcat.
Due in large part to the controversial firing of former head coach John Mackovic, coverage of men's sports on the front page was unusually high this semester. Again, this is because the future of the football head coach was on the minds of a majority of our readers.
According Fera, the sports desk splits its coverage of major UA sports partly by demand, which is determined by the fan base teams receive at home. Football averaged 40,000 fans in seven games. Men's basketball will pull in approximately 14,500 people for in each of its 17 games and the Icecats get around 4,500 per game.
Currently, no women's team brings in these kinds of numbers. Women's basketball averaged a school record of 2,867 fans per game last season, even though it won all but one of 14 games in McKale Center.
Tomorrow, the sports desk will present its basketball preview. You will notice that the color center-page spread is divided in two - half men's, half women's - and the teams share the front page and the main story. Last year, in the same feature, the men's team got the two-page color spread, and the women's team was placed in black and white on the next page. The change is not because the Wildcat is making some statement that we cover both male and female sports equally, because we don't, and we'd be crazy journalists if we did. But it is split evenly because both teams are predicted to be good in the Pacific-10 Conference.
We appreciate hearing from the women's basketball team regarding what we printed in the Wildcat. Unwarranted attacks on women's sports should not appear in our pages. While we do not cover women's sports equally, we hope the female teams and their fan bases recognize that the Wildcat is sensitive to the Title IX issue.
Jessica Lee is an environmental science senior. She can be reached at