I Love to Play the Bimbo Sometimes With Athletes”

The role of professional interactions between female sports journalists and their male sources in the production of sports reports

Bibliographic Data

ID12908644
AuthorsLucie Schoch (0000-0001-9278-775X, Moscow State University of Technologies and Management named after K.G. Razumovskiy, corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume7
Issue1
Pages96-111
Publication date2012-06-27
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournalism Practice (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1751-2786 • E-ISSN: 1751-2794
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17512786.2012.701922
OpenAlexW1542862458
LanguageEN
Citations received24
References cited20

This article analyses the professional interactions between female journalists and their sources, key moments in the information production process, and explores, in the context of the Swiss daily press, one of the most masculine journalistic universes: sports journalism. It illustrates that because of the specific mode of recruitment into this journalistic speciality, women are confronted with various constraints—a lack of knowledge in the domain of sports, overwhelmingly male sources, and tensions linked to the fact that they are women—and with expectations from their chief editors that they will develop a “feminine” view of sports news. They are required to adapt and adjust to their role in a way that severely constrains their interactions with their male sources. Thus, controlling their appearance, language, and attitudes, these women make intentional use of certain stereotypes associated with femininity—“women as object of seduction” and “women as weak and inoffensive”—for professional goals, when the interaction warrants. They believe that those strategies allow them to have easier access to their sources and to create interactions encouraging the exchange of information that they judge to be sincere, authentic and more private, that would permit them to write deeper and more “human” articles

Athletes · Context (archaeology · Femininity · Journalism · Media studies · Object (grammar · Political science · Public relations · Sociology · Computer Science · Gender Studies · Gender Studies in Language · History · Media Studies and Communication · Medicine · Psychology · Sociology and Education Studies

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