Sports journalism and cultural authority in the digital age

Sports journalists are experiencing transformations to the bases of their cultural authority in the twenty-first century. Sports journalism moved towards gossip and sensationalism in the 1960s as a result of the displacement of its reportage of sports events by radio and television (Whannel 2002). This shift led to an increasing demand on access to sources inside professional sport for stories that would often be aggressively pursued (Boyle 2006). Sports journalism therefore became reliant on its place within the sport-media production complex to legitimize its dominant position as the constructors of meaning and context around sport (Wenner 1989). The sport-media production complex is defined as a series of inter-locking, networked power relationships between media, sponsors, clubs, leagues and governing bodies leading to the manufacture of sport as a commodity.