Carlin Week 5

This week's first reading, "The Whitening of Media and the Coloring of Black Athletes' Images," author Kevin Blackistone talks about how diversity has fallen out of the focus of newsrooms in the new millennium. Blackistone starts by talking about the role media played during the civil unrest of the mid-20th century. He writes that the media was largely blamed for not presenting a clear picture of what was happening in the country. Rather, a white media was presenting news for a white audience. Diversity improved throughout the latter part of the century, but tailed off in the last decade.

He argues that this has led to a different image of black athletes when compared to white ones. He used examples of players like Michael Vick and Tiger Woods who were vilified in the media for their actions, whereas players like Ben Roethlisberger were largely overlooked by the media for their misgivings.

The second reading largely talks about the sports department in a newspaper being known as a "toy department." The author writes that the sports department has gotten this title because its perceived unwillingness to serve the watchdog function of journalism.

The second reading also analyzed the role that new media has played in sports journalism. One case study the article used was the Manny Ramirez steroid story. Its findings indicate that almost half of the stories about the subject were used by new media. A large chunk of these were from ESPN.

My preliminary subject for my paper is to analyze how the local and national media covered the Michael Vick signing in Philadelphia and what, if any, guidelines editors used for how the reporters covered this story.