State sports writing legends: We all kinda look alike, don't we?

If you happened to visit the recently announced list of The 50 Legends of the Alabama Sports Writers Association*, you saw a scroll of outstanding journalists who witnessed and captured many of the greatest sports moments of our lives.

But also: A bunch of white guys.

The list of 50 includes one Black journalist (Rubin Grant) and one female journalist (Kathy Jo Lumpkin). Whose fault is that?

Considering the ridiculously non-diverse pool it had to choose from, not the selection committee’s. (But I am dumbfounded by its omission of my 28-year colleague Solomon Crenshaw Jr., a constant ASWA award winner.)

OK, then whose?

That would be mine.  And every other hiring editor in every other state newspaper sports department for the past 50 years.

It’s true we didn’t get a lot of applications from Black or female sports writers, but that’s no excuse. Recruitment of under-represented groups should have been standard practice.

Why does it matter?  Well, it’s about impossible for any news organization to fulfill its commitment to the community it covers, or to even understand the community it covers, if it has no internal voices from that community.  I know, for instance, of several cases in which a female sports journalist might have said, “Hey, let’s not run that sympathetic profile of this athlete accused of rape.” 

This state has had – and still does have – a number of good Black and female sports reporters. But in the past, these reporters usually were freelance writers rather than staff writers, or didn’t stay long in the state, or, amazingly, got laid off. Today, representation is proportionally better in TV sports departments than at print/digital outlets. 

In a report released in September 2021, The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport surveyed more than 100 newspapers and websites around the country and found that 77 percent of sports reporters were white and 85 percent were male. The numbers were similar for sports editors.

This is dismal, but actually represents slow progress. Nationally, female beat reporters are no longer an oddity (despite what Cam Newton might think), and the two best sports commentators in the business are Christine Brennan of USA Today and Sally Jenkins of The Washington Post.

Here and elsewhere, it’s possible to do better. Mentoring and scholarship programs offered to college students can work (the majority of my sports writing students are female and my classes always have some degree of Black representation). Early identification and recruitment of prospective hires also works, whether it’s a college journalist or someone working at a smaller outlet.

I’m optimistic that the next group of 50 Legends in 2072 is going to look a whole lot different.

 * Disclosure for those of you who don’t click the list: I am on it.