Page 80 - Sport Culture and the Media

WORKING IN MEDIA SPORT || 61

on and on with their long words and they think they’re clever. I mean
this patronizing crap that they come out with . . . The good broadsheet
journalists, the McIlvanneys of this world, they will never patronize their
colleagues on the tabloids, they’re too big for that, they’re big men in every
sense of the word. They know we have a difficult job and most of us do it
extremely well . . . Most of them wouldn’t last a month on a tabloid
newspaper because they’re not good enough. I have no hesitation. They’ve
all got wonderful degrees, no doubt, all went to university, but they
couldn’t do our job, wouldn’t know where to start. It would destroy them
... We’ve all got a job to do and most of us do it extremely well, otherwise
we wouldn’t still be doing it.
(Calvin)
The unflattering image of the tabloid sports reporter is, indeed, powerfully
imprinted on the minds of many university-educated sports reporters and
editors. As one sports editor on a British weekly magazine put it, ‘I think sports
journalists just tend to be real, particularly with the tabloids, the tabloid hack
element. I find it’s a stereotype that is actually largely, really true’ (Alistair),
while his counterpart on a broadsheet newspaper stated, ‘there are very great
differences between what, say, a tabloid soccer man does . . . and what one
of the quality people [does], especially the people on the Independent or the
Guardian, which are very much writer driven’ (Philip). This assertion of the
‘quality’ writing function over and against that of ‘hack’ journalism is con-
stantly made by those who wish to elevate media sports texts, especially of the
print variety, almost to the status of art. Sports journalism is not the only
specialism where aspiration and current standing are strangers. One British
freelance sports journalist and academic placed the sports round at ‘second
bottom of the pile, second only to media journalists. Media journalists have got
a real chip on their shoulder, they believe they are seen to be the lowest of the
low – and very often they are’ (Sidney). Once again, the status of journalists
who cover popular culture is believed to be poor, the lowly cultural status of
sport and television rubbing off onto the journalist responsible for reporting on
them. The possibility of transcendence is offered by turning formulaic writing
into artistic expression:

there are people who have turned it into such an art, feature writing and
the atmosphere, who recognize sport as being much more than just a
knockabout between two competing sides of individuals but as part of
the culture of the country and the society and the sociological aspects
of sport . . . They elevate their own sport to something bigger and greater
really, and they write, and because they can write well and capture the
atmosphere and the social reflections in sport, then I think they actually