Joseph Caporoso
The End of the Sports Section: How Sports Blogs and
the Internet are Ending an Era of Sports Journalism
Sports journalism is being changed on many different levels because of
blogging. This project examines these changes, and their implications
for the future of sports news distribution. To illustrate the impact of
blogs, three case studies are explored that display the most prominent
ways blogs are changing sports journalism. The first case follows the
coverage of NFL quarterback Matt Leinhart’s off-season activities and
provides an example of blogs changing the types of stories covered by
the mainstream media. In the second case study, a traditional main-
stream story was broken by an Internet blog. This occurrence started
the blog’s integration into mainstream media. The final case study
shows a blog acting as a “watchdog” of the mainstream sports media
and negatively impacting public perception of traditional journalists.
Previous research on the relationship of journalism to blogging has ex-
pressed hope about these changes having a positive impact on news
coverage. While the case studies cannot entirely confirm that hope, they
do display encouraging trends on how sports are being presented to
fans.
