“We The Media” of female sports

"We The Media" by Dan Gillmor / Photo credit: wethemedia.oreilly.com

This blog post is part of my ongoing weekly series discussing the role of social media and female athletics. My latest reading is We The Media, by Dan Gillmor, who will be joining my class via Skype tonight.

 

In short, Dan Gillmor’s book is “important,” and is one that every female athlete sports fan should read. Why? Because he’s 100 percent spot on, and his call to action it’s our only hope for survival.

Gillmor wrote his book in 2004 and then printed it in paperback in 2006, long before the worst economic climates in recent history hit our country, a climate in which journalists from around the world are now suffering, particularly in the women’s sports world, where, as Mechelle Voepel puts it, “Pretty much nothing is ever “safe.””

Look at how Dan’s predictions relate to the the female athletic industry - our one comprehensive magazine died at the end of 2002 because it wasn’t profiting. Not only that, but incredibly talented journalists are taking buyouts and are now living in some shaded area between a freelance writer and a professional blogger, and paid far less than they deserve.

But at the same time, something really good is happening to us, too. It’s a phenomenon which Gillmor also correctly predicted, one that we’re just beginning to see emerge.

I’m talking about our word’s current state of “citizen journalism,” which Gillmor referred to as “tomorrow’s journalsim,” where an ”infinetly complex conversation”  exists through interconnected devices. It’s a world where “consumers of journlism sort through opinionated conversations and assemble something resembling reality, or maybe even truth, if they are willing to seek out sources from a variety of viewpoints.” (p. 42)

As he correctly predicted, we now think of this phenomenon as nothing else but reality.

When Gillmor wrote this book, he left his position as a journalist and started working for the Center for Citizen Media at Arizona State University.

I personally think that if our (overqualified) female sports industry’s journalists take a similar career path (or are forced to do so), they will find a home in promoting, teaching and encouraging  “regular citizens” of the media to cover women’s sports. It’s simply nothing short of the right thing to do.

Our academic institutions should be the first to embrace such an idea.  Some of them (Tucker Center, Penn State) already are.