Gymnastics journalism is undergoing a ‘for fans, by fans’ revolution

Gymnastics fans weren’t happy with the tone and quality of coverage for their favorite sport. So they went out and changed it themselves.

Most sportswriters are, on some level, sports fans. Some were driven to enter the field because they played a sport, or were otherwise fans of it. Some were assigned to cover a sport, or an event, and developed a love for it as they developed a feel for the language and ritual around it. But gymnastics is one of the few sports covered at the top level almost exclusively by people who began their careers as fans, not as professional writers or retired athletes whose expertise is assumed because of experience.

I’m a professional writer who has always enjoyed watching and reading about gymnastics. I took gymnastics as a child, but never progressed out of recreational classes; still, I loved the sport and admired the athletes. But it was hard to find commentary on the sport from anyone who exuded both knowledge about and enthusiasm for the sport. Too often, the athletes were treated by broadcasters and writers like children and/or dolls, better seen and not heard, and their coaches were often used as a proxy for soundbites.

But a dive into the message boards and forums about the sport revealed something different. This was not just fandom, excitement, enthusiasm, although those things were present and welcome. This was real knowledge — of the sport, of the names of skills and their values in a subjective sport that often came down to the whims of judges, of the athletes themselves and the dynamics on teams and within clubs. And it filled a gap.

“Content is king,” said Jessica Taylor Price, a fan-turned-gymnastics writer whose byline has appeared in Teen Vogue and on ESPNW. Fans wanted information, and information was scarce when the Olympics weren’t in progress. So they made their own portals for getting that information out.

As a journalist who came of professional age as the news made its shift from traditional print and broadcast outlets to websites, then to mobile apps and streaming video and podcasts, I watched too as the people writing those blogs and recording those podcasts became the sport’s arbiters, revered over the traditionalists — the handful of sportswriters who gave gymnastics — but not the gymnasts, more often preferring to lionize their coaches — ink during those two weeks every four years when the Summer Olympics played out, the trio of network broadcasters who commented on athletes’ weight and made comments about their adoptive parents instead of telling us how hard it was to do their skills. Lauren Hopkins, a blogger who founded The Gymternet in 2014, began her career writing about the sport at The Couch Gymnast, where she had credentials to cover major meets as early as 2010. Hopkins, who holds down a full-time communications job in addition to writing her blog, was part of an NBC team that won an Emmy for its coverage of gymnastics during the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, though she worked from Connecticut.

Fan-first Gymnastics journalists led the coverage of the Larry Nassar case

While rumors circulated in 2015 about the dismissal of the US team doctor, Larry Nassar, from his work with USA Gymnastics, the sport’s governing body in this country, it was GymCastic, a podcast started in 2012 by Jessica O’Beirne, who worked at the time as a law librarian, that gave us an episode that September about recognizing signs of abuse in the sport, and how to put measures in place to prevent it. GymCastic featured a full episode on abuse in the sport as far back as 2013.

And it was GymCastic where McKayla Maroney, the 2012 Olympic gold and silver medalist, chose to grant an interview where she revealed for the first time how abusive her coaches had been, to her and others, and hinted at something deeper, more systemic, in the sport. We didn’t know then, but we soon would, that Maroney was speaking from behind an NDA she signed preventing her from sharing details about Nassar, who, within the year, would stand accused of abusing hundreds of gymnasts, including Maroney, at every level of the sport under the guise of providing medical care.

O’Beirne left up an interview on GymCastic that she had done with Nassar himself in 2013, saying it was important for people to hear how Nassar manipulated adults and the media as well as himself. Hopkins spoke frankly on her blog and on Twitter about her own friendship with Nassar and how easy it was to miss any signs of inappropriate behavior (and later wrote similarly about Maggie Haney, the coach who was recently suspended from USAG coaching for five years after her athletes reported physical and emotional abuse). It’s rare to hear major journalists talking about how their sources fooled them, or how they got taken for a ride (usually you only hear these things when someone is forced to surrender a Pulitzer).

When Nassar was sentenced in 2018 to a life behind bars for multiple sex crimes, an army of his survivors showed up in each of two Michigan courthouses for a chance to confront him. This, too, was reported first by the fan-writers; the traditional press had to scramble to catch up.

John Orozco, who was named to the 2016 US men’s Olympic team but had to withdraw after a knee injury, now competes for Puerto Rico. He told his story of leaving the US program because of systemic racism and discrimination to Gymcastic in an exclusive interview last year.

After Al Trautwig, who had provided commentary for NBC during many Olympics and other major gymnastics meets, was summarily dismissed from his post after many gymnasts, including the GOAT Simone Biles and her parents and coach, complained about his coverage of them on air, fans asked online: Who can we trust on TV? Olly Hogben, an Olympics Channel commentator known for his liberal use of puns and his shameless fandom for the sport, emerged as the hero for many. Kathy Johnson Clarke, a former top gymnast (she competed for the US in the 1984 Olympics, winning a silver team medal and a bronze on the balance beam) and an exuberant fan of the sport on her popular Twitter feed, enlivened NCAA gymnastics coverage with her thorough knowledge of the sport and her gentle support for the athletes and their hard work.

When, in the absence of the Olympics this summer, and the subsequent absence of major media coverage of gymnastics, more than 30 British gymnasts posted on Instagram their stories of abuse by their coaches and their national federation under the hashtag #gymnastalliance. They sparked an international reckoning; their hashtag is more than 1,000 posts strong, with gymnasts from all corners of the globe sharing their experiences. GymCastic covered the Gymnast Alliance just two weeks after the first posts appeared on Instagram. A few weeks after that, Price beat The New York Times to the punch with a lengthy story on #gymnastalliance in Power Plays the day before veteran sportswriter Juliet Macur published her account.

Journalism, as an institution, is not fully over the idea that bloggers and podcasters and other forms of digital media are illegitimate in some way, despite their very authentic credentials. Both The Gymternet and GymCastic will cover the Olympics from Tokyo if they happen as planned this summer. Hopkins has that Emmy. And gymnastics writing, particularly in the years since the Nassar story blew the door off USA Gymnastics, shows that when the fans are in charge, the accuracy is as on point as Laurie Hernandez’s toes. These writers do more with the same access as traditional outlets, because they have made an effort to get to know gymnasts on social media and to advocate for the athletes having a voice. Unlike traditional outlets, which tended to gravitate first to coaches and federation officials for information, gymnastics writers and podcasters have created what appears to be a genuine, reciprocal relationship with the athletes themselves, both in person and on social media.

When you aren’t seen as needing to uphold all the rules, you can change them.