Sports Television Reporters and the Negotiation of Fragmented Professional Identities

Abstract

This research examines the professional identities of sports television reporters at a regional sports network (RSN) in a major East Coast market. The ethnographic techniques of participant observation and interviews with these sports television news gatherers provide an in‐depth look at the increasingly complex work facing sports journalists in this specific area of the sports–media complex. The study's findings reveal that women and African American sports television reporters working at this RSN said they are treated differently—even to an advantage—because of their gender and race. Such issues and developments reveal the sports television workplace as increasingly complicated and problematic for those working in it.