General features and trends

The Importance of English Sports News

Sports news is of paramount importance in journalism. In today’s leading mass media, it is considered to be one of the three mainstay departments, along with social news and economic news. (Zhang Gongfei, 2001:8).

Forms of English Sports News

There are three forms of English Sports News, newspaper, television and internet.

Newspaper is the eldest form of all three mentioned. Since 1900, newspaper publishing worldwide has expanded greatly. The growth of other news sources, such as radio and 24-hour television news stations, has helped diminish the impact of newspapers. The demise of the printed word, especially in the form of a daily newspaper, is periodically predicted to be imminent by industry analysts. However, it is still the mainstream media currently and no doubt the biggest source of English sports news headlines.

Television clearly is the most active and in some way, on-the-spot means of media. In television news programs, audience’s choice is limited as the following program is decided and pre-arranged by the producers. Thus, audiences pay more attention to the program than the headlines.

Internet is the fastest developing means of media. Promptness is its superiority. Different from traditional print, the story of news is not shown in the following space, but in the next page which needs a simple click of the mouse. The headlines appear in front of readers independently. Usually, various headlines of a same group are located in the same column for the reader to scan and choose. Under the same level, only the headlines with a highlight can successfully attract internet surfers’ hand.

General Features

The sports department was for many years considered to be the “toy department” of the newspaper, now the toy department has become legitimate. All the large-scale newspaper agencies, broadcasting stations and TV stations have their own independent sports departments or columns. With so much competition for the leisure time of individuals in such a time, it is tougher to get the attention of a reader with so much other material available for them to read. That’s why sports reporters are beefing up their products for the contemporary sports fans. Sportswriters and journalists have to report and edit diverse competing activities and broaden the appealing of their product to attract more readers at all levels.

Meanwhile, sportswriters are also becoming less and less event oriented and more and more non-event, or process oriented in their reporting. Their stories become more insightful and interpretative, the emphasis less on the results and more on why these results occurred. Hence, the range of sports stories broadened considerably world-wide. Although sports events still appeal to readers, interest is growing in sports topics off the field and court; Reporters began to look into restrooms, courtrooms, and training rooms. At the same time, more and more sports reporting involves athletes, athletic programs, sports agents, gambling, the abuse of illegal drugs and athletic organization rules cheating. In-depth reporting has become the salvation of sports writing.