The first sportswriting job I ever had in a 30-plus year career was as a part timer at the Daily Record in my hometown of Morristown, NJ. I would be naive to think gender did not play a role in my hire.
I was part of the second wave of female sportswriters to join newspaper staffs around the country back in the 1980s, taking a job that had traditionally been reserved for men. It was trendy to have a token woman on the staff back then. All the papers were doing it.
Some women didn’t last long. Some went on to be among the best in the business. In the end, it was ability and connections that determined how far we went. Same as men.
But unlike the men who were hired and promoted, we often faced a backlash. No matter where my career led me — I went on to have bylines in The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, ESPN.com and too many other magazines, newspapers and websites to count — men always questioned whether I deserved to be there.
As a staff sports reporter in Hartford, Conn., after I had been promoted to pro hockey writer, a man approached me outside the Hartford Whalers locker room one day and told me flat out was taking a job away from a man. As if a man was more deserving simply because he was a man.
When I moved to the Detroit Free Press as Red Wings writer, a journalism student went out of his way to meet with me so he could tell me to my face I didn’t deserve to be a hockey writer because I never played the game.
The first time I walked into the Carolina Panthers press room as NFL beat writer, it was a male reporter who bluntly said the only reason I was hired to cover that team was because I was a woman. I once received an email saying I should stick to women’s sports because I didn’t have testosterone, so I shouldn’t write about male athletes and their need to dominate an opponent.
I’d like to think I earned all those gigs over the years. I’d like to think I made a difference with reporting that hopefully made racing safer, exposed an alcoholic driving without a license, stopped a powerful team owner from sexually harassing his employees.
But as far as the critics were concerned, I didn’t deserve the jobs because I was a woman. Period.
My sportswriting days are long over. But I do wonder, were I starting out today, if I would have the same opportunities available to me. Hiring a woman for a traditionally male job seems verboten these days.
Funny, the first locker room I ever entered as a sportswriter for the Daily Record was the New Jersey Generals of the old, now defunct USFL. Anybody remember what happened to that team and league? A rich man desperate for attention and respect bought the Generals and not only destroyed the team with his ill-advised, grandiose spending, he managed to take down the entire league.
It was an epic failure, a level of bumbling incompetence so great it should have branded him for life.
Nah.
These days, Donald Trump is leading the DEI witch hunt against women and minorities in this country. He’s the man.
Art by freepik
Great point, Viv.
Outstanding, Viv!