This post was updated July 23 at 6:48 p.m.
As newsrooms shrink and newspapers reimagine their sports coverage, student sports journalism has never been more critical than now.
The Daily Northwestern proved that July 8.
Two weeks ago, summer editor-in-chief Nicole Markus and print managing editors Alyce Brown, Cole Reynolds and Divya Bhardwaj detailed a former Northwestern University football player’s allegations of hazing and sexual assault in the locker room.
Markus, Brown and Reynolds published further allegations two days later, focusing on racism within the program that specifically targeted Latino and Black athletes. They shone a light on how the school administration mishandled the previous two-week suspension of coach Pat Fitzgerald.
The Daily Northwestern’s investigation and consequential reporting led to the July 10 dismissal of Fitzgerald – who had been in charge of the football program since 2006 and a member of the Wildcats’ coaching staff since 2001.
A triumph of student sports journalists held the athletics program’s crown jewel and a prestigious university accountable. However, on the same day that The Daily Northwestern received flowers from the sports community for its role in reporting the scandal, sports journalism took a demoralizing hit.
The New York Times announced on July 10 its plans to disband its sports section.
“The shuttering of the sports desk, which has more than 35 reporters and editors, is a major shift for The Times,” media reporters Katie Robertson and John Koblin wrote in the article announcing the newspaper’s decision. “The department’s coverage of games, athletes and team owners, and its Sports of The Times column in particular, were once a pillar of American sports journalism.”
The Times has fostered sports journalists for more than a century, focusing on out-of-the-box topics in sports instead of just the city of New York. It was a style of writing to look up to, demonstrating the art of approaching a familiar story from a fresh perspective.
Now, it’s soon to be gone, with The Times’ sports department on the verge of fading away as it shifts its focus to The Athletic – an online-only sports journalism service it acquired in January 2022 – for all its sports coverage. In fact, The Athletic’s co-founder Alex Mather once predicted the present day’s ironic sports journalism world.
“We will wait every local paper out and let them continuously bleed until we are the last ones standing,” Mather said to The Times in 2017. “We will suck them dry of their best talent at every moment. We will make business extremely difficult for them.”
Dramatic turns weren’t just for the Times Square lights.
One day earlier on the opposite coast, the Los Angeles Times switched up its sports coverage as well. Because of a change in its manufacturer, the print deadline was moved to 3 p.m., signaling the exclusion of game stories, box scores and standings as regular features of the daily paper.
Two of the largest newspapers in the world have removed vital coverage heading into the rest of the decade. Newspapers across the nation are laying off segments of their staff, leaving fewer jobs for student journalists looking to join the professional ranks.
Where is the hope for sports journalism?
The Daily Northwestern’s courageous reporting showcases that hope.
Student journalism publications fill that void, manifesting the importance of telling the stories of peers and being the voice for the voiceless – striving to reinvent sports journalism for the next cohort of reporters 20 years from now.
Student journalists are not going to shy away from reporting a story, engaging in their community or covering the fundamentals of day-to-day journalism. The Daily Northwestern is the most recent addition to that list, representing honest and factual reporting.
What lies ahead for national sports journalism may not be evident just yet, but college journalists continue to show why the industry is as important as ever.
Comments are closed.