Page 154 - Sport Culture and the Media

TAKING US THROUGH IT || 135

This snippet from the story contains key elements of the genre in its familiar
use of dramatic words (‘amazingly’, ‘revealed’), nicknames (‘Gazza’, ‘Magpies’,
‘Ferdy’), compressed media sports speak (‘Strike ace’, ‘title collapse’), puns
(‘took the “mickey mouse”’) and authentic seeming – although coyly presented
– swearing (‘took the p***’, ‘s*** yourselves’). The headline also plays on dif-
ferences in accent, with Disney echoing the Scottish way of saying ‘does not’ as
‘disnae’. The critical comments about Scottish soccer (likely to appeal to the
principally English readership), the inter-textual reference to Disney, and the
feeling of being privy to elite football banter, all obey those orthodox principles
of news value that promote controversy, celebrity and revelation.
This format can be varied: some stories carry the tag ‘exclusive’, relaying
information that has been captured by or leaked to the sports journalist, like the
following opening to a small item from the sports pages of the British tabloid
newspaper Daily Star:
ALBION WANT ROYLE

EXCLUSIVE: By Ralph Ellis
Joe Royle is poised to bounce back into football as West Brom boss.
The 48-year-old has leapt to the top of the Hawthorns wanted list in the
search to replace Ray Harford.
I understand Albion officials have made checks with Royle’s old club
Everton to make sure all his contractual ties at Goodison Park have been
severed.
(Ellis 1997: 42)

What Ellis ‘understands’ is unattributed information that he has gained on the
sports round – later in the story we are told that ‘Royle has told friends he’s
ready to go back to work’. The sources are mysterious – unnamed friends and
club officials – but the story has the authority of insider knowledge to which, by
its nature, the readership cannot be privy. Another variation is the interview
that generates the highly detailed information that only a dedicated sports
fan would be interested in, but which the sports journalist has access to through
the interview process and by collating and analysing data. For example, an
interview-based story on the Yankees’ baseball catcher Jorge Posada in the
New York Times Sports Wednesday is packed with statistical minutiae like ‘He
said he was leaner after reducing body fat percentage to 6 percent, stronger
after adding 15 pounds of muscle and quicker after thousands of sprints and
agility drills’ and ‘Posada (.250 average, 6 homers and 25 r.b.i. in 1997)’ (Curry
1998: C2). Such stories, however, stop well short of critique, concentrating
instead on the unashamed entertainment functions of the sports media. Others,
however, take up the press’s more serious, campaigning role, as in the back-page