Week 3: Salwen/Garrison and Hancherick Reaction

Matt Snider

In reading both of the articles, I noticed that each one focuses on the problems of today’s journalists. In Drew Hancherick’s article, he focuses his point at the progression of journalism over the years in regards to the advancement of technology. He begins his piece by reflecting on the emergence of sports journalism in the 1920’s to its adaptation into today’s society through the mediums like twitter. In Michael Salwen and Bruce Garrison’s article, however, their focus is much more scientific in that they produced a study to find out exactly what was the problem within sports journalism as well as its relation to the biggest problem facing journalism as a whole.

                According to Hancherick, the biggest emerging problem within the sports journalism field is trying to compete with technology, in that, to quote Hancherick himself, the news cycle has gone to 60 seconds a minute, 60 minutes an hour. This does create a problem in that credibility is constantly left at the door for the convenience of publication. Often times in today’s society people will see news break from a reporter’s personal twitter account as opposed to a newspapers account for instance. One has to image a reason for this is that the news might not be 100 percent confirmed. Yet, the news will get published and reported on. This can lead to situations such as the one involving Buster Olney that Hancherick describes, where a media and public backlash occurs because information cannot be truly found as credible.

                In addition to faulty information, the rapid fire news that Hancherick describes also presents another problem that occurs when there is no news to report on.  This idea leads the way for smaller, possibly insignificant news to garner unnecessary attention. An example of this can be found in almost every major sport around the trade deadline. Every fan wants their team to land the land the most coveted free agent and it is rarely the case that it actually does happen. Yet year after year information will get leaked that one team is talking to another team. Although no actual trade talk is discussed, fans will generally run wild with the countless possibilities that often had no promise to begin with. For a real life parallel, simply look back at the NHL offseason and winger Bobby Ryan.

                Salwen and Garrison’s article did hold some similarities to Hancherick’s, in that they also found that credibility was a common major problem seen by other sports journalists. Their research did shed light on another problem though, which was that sport journalist doing not directly identify with the same problems facing journalism as a whole. This idea is proof that while although journalism in sports has gained traction in becoming more legitimate, it still has ground to cover to become equal.