Women made sports media history in 2017, but obstacles in the industry persist

After a year in which female sports journalists established themselves as leaders in the broadcast booth and across the media, three reporters reflect on the issues that remain.

Over the past few years, women in the sports world have made progress toward equality in the workplace. But for every step taken forward, for those in the field, it can seem to be countered quickly with a reminder of the work still left to be done.

In April 2016, ESPN’s Around The Horn featured an all-female panel for the first time in the show’s history, consisting of Kate Fagan, Jemele Hill, Jackie MacMullan and Sarah Spain. The panel marked a historic moment that came just a week after the program’s 3,000th episode.

Four days later, however, Spain participated in a video entitled “#MoreThanMean – Women in Sports ‘Face’ Harassment,” released by Just Not Sports on YouTube. The video featured real men reading tweets from others directed at Spain and Julie DiCaro, and showcased the struggles some of the women in the field face when it comes to social media.

The experiences exposed in the video weren’t and aren’t exclusive to Spain or DiCaro.

Reporters Shalise Manza Young of Yahoo! Sports’ Shutdown Corner and ESPN’s Michele Steele shared their own stories of social media insults thrown their way.

Manza Young, a woman of color with an extensive resume headlined by her time covering the New England Patriots for the Boston Globe, said that she had some extreme comments sent her way on Twitter, solely based on a failed NFL Draft trade.

“I had somebody say Aaron Hernandez should’ve shot me too because I reported something that I sat on for a little bit, and in the end, I reported on a Draft Day trade that didn’t end up coming to pass,” Manza Young said.

(A similar, representative tweet can be found in a simple Twitter search, with one user referencing Hernandez’s suicide after Manza Young slipped up on wording in a previous tweet.)

Steele as well shared her stories of her negative experiences on social media based on “fans” getting upset with her reporting.

“I don’t get it as bad as some of the women who are more on the opinion side of the equation,” Steele said. “But, I’ve been called the ‘c’ word. I’ve been called a bitch. I’ve been called any number of names on social media for reporting information that some fans don’t like.”

Steele said that, while social media has always been an easy outlet for Internet trolls and upset fans to cast their opinions, a lot of the negativity in the sports world gets directed at women.

“Sadly, you have to accept there is going to be a certain amount of vitriol cast your way that is going to be specifically related to your gender,” Steele said. “As a woman, unfortunately, you just have to accept and move on from that as a part of our business.”

Manza Young cited poor regulation on Twitter’s part as the main piece of the issue, but also mentioned anonymity as a key factor in some of the negativity she receives.

“There are some truly heinous things people put out there that they would never say to your face,” Manza Young said. “99 times out of 100 you wouldn’t have the balls to say anything like that to someone. Because you can hide behind your stupid little screen name, I do think it’s gotten worse.”

To go along with the poor treatment on social media, statistics say women in the journalism world in general, and specifically in sports, are still getting the short end of the stick.

In a study done by the Women’s Media Center, research showed that the number of female assistant sports editors at 100 newspapers and websites in the United States and Canada fell by almost half, dropping from 17.2 percent in 2012 to 9.8 percent in 2014.

The center’s same study in March of 2017 concluded that, in 20 of the nation’s top news outlets, men produced 62.3 percent of news reports during their researched period, while women produced 37.7 percent of news reports.

Still, female sports journalists are not backing down. In fact, they’re making serious moves forward, despite statistics painting a more depressing big picture.

Just recently, in Dec. 2017, it was confirmed that Jessica Mendoza would be back as a part of the Sunday Night Baseball commentary team for the 2018 season, providing expertise from her Olympic gold and silver medal career.

Earlier in the year, after Chris Berman’s retirement after the 2015-2016 NFL season, ESPN placed Sam Ponder in the driver’s seat for Sunday NFL Countdown. In the show’s 32 years on the air, a woman had never hosted the program, hopefully signaling a changing of the guard for their NFL programming.

Around that same time, in Sept. 2017, ESPN’s Beth Mowins became the first woman to be on play-by-play for a Monday Night Football game, commentating alongside Rex Ryan and sideline reporter Sergio Dipp.

“A woman hadn’t been in the booth for Monday Night Football,” Steele said. “It was awesome to see her carry both Rex Ryan and the sideline reporter, Sergio Dipp, in that game. I thought Beth did an amazing job and I would love to see her back in the booth again at some point for a package of NFL games.”

Steele received her wish, as Mowins was on the call for the Miami Dolphins-Buffalo Bills game in Week 15. Unfortunately, Mowins still received some harsh feedback on social media from male fans who were unhappy with a woman leading the way for an entire football game. The disdain was similar to that of fans who were upset with Doris Burke leading a basketball broadcast on the same network.

It can come from the players too. In early October, Cam Newton ridiculed Carolina Panthers beat reporter Jourdan Rodrigue during a press conference, chastising her question and saying how funny it was for a woman to know about running routes in the NFL.

Ryan Glasspiegel, a writer for The Big Lead covering sports media, mentioned that, despite the rise of women leading commentary for sports games, more needs to be done to get fans used to the idea.

“Beth Mowins and Doris Burke are gaining prominence as broadcasters,” Glasspiegel said. “But it’s pretty easy to look around the landscape and see that they are the exception rather than the rule.”

Glasspiegel said that there is a noticeable shift occurring in the sports journalism world when it comes to women playing a bigger role in sports coverage.

“I’m not sure if the power dynamics will be objectively equal anytime soon,” Glasspiegel said. “But it’s pretty clear that the tides are shifting and I do believe that thankfully more opportunities in key sports media positions will be available to women as we go forward than backward.”

Fans are seeing an increased frequency of historic moments with the likes of Mowins, Burke, Ponder or the Around The Horn panel from back in April of 2016. Now, Manza Young believes it’ll just take some more reps for sports fans to get accustomed to a woman leading the programming they watch on ESPN.

“I think they have to keep doing things like that to sort of normalize it,” Manza Young said. “There are still some men, it persists that they think that sports are this men’s thing and they don’t like a woman’s voice talking about sports.”

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Whether they’re getting praised for their work or insulted on social media, the goal at this point for women in sports journalism is for no conversation to pop up at all.

“I think what we need to get past is being dismissive of ‘Well, she’s just pretty on the sidelines, and the coach is only talking to her because she’s pretty,’” Manza Young said. “A lot of these women grew up playing sports, watching sports, consuming sports the same way young boys did. We just need to get to a point where it’s like ‘Yeah, it’s a woman telling us about a football game.’”