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Player profiles, interviews with club administrators, form guides and speculative gossip. The cynics among us would say that this is all we can expect from our sports journalists.
But recently, we’ve been treated to a glimpse of sports writing at it’s best.
Yesterday, Prime Minister Julia Gillard took the first tentative steps to take on the gambling industry, calling upon broadcasters to follow a more stringent code for gambling on live sport.
The government has threatened to play hardball with any broadcasters that flout the new code.
Best of all, ”pundit” Tom Waterhouse and his ilk will be booted from live commentary teams.
It seems there is nothing like an election year for getting things done. The Labor Government’s epiphany on this issue is a direct reaction to a very loud public backlash, as well as crusading investigations from the ABC’s Marian Wilkinson and Fairfax’s Peter FitzSimons.
Just last week, FitzSimons wrote in his regular column:
“I have written extensively on the need to stop gambling advertising, and am always overwhelmed with 99 percent acclaim: ‘Go Harder!’ ‘Rip in, you speak for me!’ ‘FitzSimons, I have always considered you a loud mouthed dickhead, with a stupid red rag on his head, no doubt because your head is usually up your arse, but on this issue….”
I have to confess to being part of the latter group.
I rarely find much to celebrate in FitzSimons’ chest-beating, over the top style of journalism.
But this is an issue where his writing has stood out from the pack, and credit needs to be given where credit is due.
Without FitzSimons’ very loud and very public analysis in his recent columns, the issue would surely not have reached so many people and raised such a vicious backlash.
About a week ago, Michael Brull’s excellent article on “conviction journalism” for Overland did the rounds on social media.
It was a well-argued riposte to the idea that journalists should simply report the news “without bias.”
Journalists like to fetishise ideals of “objectivity” as a way of stating their relevance to the public domain. However, as Brull suggests, “objective journalists – the type that display no conviction in their work – produce articles that aren’t worth reading.”
Sports journalism, however, has proved to be a more complex beast. Most of the press attention, whether we like it or not, is focused on the on-field action.
Relationships between members of the media and their subjects are often jovial and close-knit, with both parties needing the other for their survival. One does not simply barge into press conferences and boardrooms asking curly questions of club administrators and management.
It might be inevitable, but it’s not a brilliant environment for head-kicking investigative journalism.
But with so much money in sport, “conviction journalists” are as necessary on the back pages as any other part of the paper.
With sport playing such a pivotal and large role in our cultural life, it’s certainly in our public interest to know the wheelings and dealings of those running the games we follow.
In recent years, we’ve seen several stories of corruption, drug use, sex and other scandals in sport.
From pill-poppers to the shady administrators and their number crunchers, their is plenty of undesirable elements involved in the sports we love.
On Friday night, the fearless Bonita Mersiades received the Football Fans Down Under Award for her role in uncovering the questionable dealings of the FFA in it’s bid to host the FIFA World Cup.
Her soon to be released book, under the working title The Bid, has already put several high-profile noses out of joint.
That she isn’t heavily attached or involved in the regular press gallery is perhaps telling. Distance can equal freedom in reporting stories like this.
There have already been several journalistic casualties of the now infamous World Cup bid.
But the fact that football fans voted Bonita Mersiades Football Writer of the Year says a lot. There is no doubt that her pursuit of the truth has made her some enemies, but few among these are the fans themselves.
Sadly, football in this country has always been a fertile ground for investigative reporting. Johnny Warren has passed away and Michael Cockerill has quietened in recent years, but their work during the 1990s was pivotal in a difficult period for the game.
Still, it’s an issue that crosses all codes and all sports. Of course, most sports writing will always be considered ‘soft’ journalism.
Sports fans don’t want to be bombarded by socio-political ramblings and detailed investigations and the expense of their daily updates and tips.
What Phil Gould thinks of the video referee on any given week, or the likelihood of the GWS Giants ever actually winning a game, or monotone player interviews will still be of most concern to the majority of readers.
Conviction journalism in sport isn’t about happy clapping over your preferred code, or tearing strips of Israel Folau for changing sides again.
The best sports writing happens when brave individuals like FitzSimons and Mersiades follow the money, and go for the jugular over the important issues.
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