Sports Media Watch recently caught up with Dr. T.C. Corrigan of Cal State San Bernardino, whose research has included an examination of the business of sports blogging. The primary topics of conversation include the current state of the sports blogosphere, as well as an account of the Penn State scandal, which unfolded while Corrigan was still with the university.
SMW: You recently did some work at Penn State University on sports blogs for your dissertation. Could you go into some broad background on that ? what you were looking for, and what you ended up finding?
Corrigan: My interest in sports blogs comes from a multi-sided perspective on the importance of the sports media culturally and economically, both in the way that sports media shapes our views of different social groups ? men and women, black and white, us and them ? but also economically, how sports media plays an important role in aggregating audiences for advertisers and in that respect plays an important role in the broader capitalist economy. So I?m coming at sports blogs from a big picture perspective, but very interested in how they?re operating on a day-to-day basis.
There?s a perspective that I use as a jumping off point, that is some folks look at sports blogs ? and blogging more generally ? as an opportune, progressive space for attending to different topics, and in different ways than covered in traditional media. So there?s an opportunity to cover, for instance, more women?s sports and non-commercial sports. When we look at blog networks like the Women Talk Sports blog network, we see that there are opportunities emerging in those areas.
My advisor at Penn State, Marie Hardin, likes to talk about sports coverage as a pie. And while we do see more coverage of women?s and not commercial sports than previously in the traditional sports media sphere, there is an enormous expansion in the overall size of the pie that has largely gone to those sports that have traditionally garnered the most attention ? and that?s commercial sports. I?ve been interested in the question of why this is. In a new media environment where a blog pretty much offers a cursor on a blank page, why is there the continued attention to sports that we have already had considerable attention to in the past.
I think there is some important merit in a cultural hegemony argument, basically that most of the folks that are talking and writing about sports are men, and that the men?s commercial professional sphere is the most worthy of attention. However, I think there the opportunity to also ask whether the organization of emerging sports media institutions provides another lens, another way of making sense of this continued attention to the same old sports. So what I was really interested in was the structure of some of these emerging media organizations ? specially focusing this case study on the SB Nation sports blog network ? and thinking of how the organizational structure of this blog network shapes the routines of the bloggers, and how those routines make some kind of media content more or less likely than others.
The way I went about this process was to dig into information how this company got started, what its organizational structure looks like, what its investment emphases are ? but I also interviewed nine bloggers from the network and talked to them about their day-to-day routines. What I was trying to do was make sense of how those routines related to the structure of the organization. The main findings that I had were that this blog network is focusing most of its investments on developing a really slick platform for bloggers to create their content on, and that they?ve also focused on creating blogs within the most popular men?s commercial professional sports. In focusing their investment on platform rather than, for instance, advertising sales or editorial investments ? most of the bloggers that I talked to were paid $200 or less a month ? because of this, we?ve got bloggers that are organizing their routines largely around those sports they have access to covering, those sports that are already getting attention in the commercial media sphere. My argument is that when you have a media organization that doesn?t put the kind of resources financially into, for instance, allowing bloggers to cover games on a regular basis, or to cover teams that aren?t normally attended to, there?s an overwhelming emphasis on providing attention to those sports and teams that have gotten coverage in the mainstream media.
SMW: Recently SB Nation made some big news by acquiring the OutSports website, which is the most prominent sports website dedicated to gay athletes and issues of homosexuality in sports. Do you think that providing that perspective is maybe broadening SB Nation from this typical mainstream commercialized sport?
Corrigan: I want to point out that when you get done with a dissertation, the last thing you want to be paying attention to and focusing on are the developments around the thing that you?ve been studying for a couple of years. So I haven?t been quite as attuned to the SB Nation developments over the past couple of months, I think largely because I needed a break.
When we?re talking about that specific development, which I read into a little bit, I think the thing worth focusing on is that for a sports media outlet like SB Nation, one of the things when you listen into their executives talk about their company?s approach ? and I did a lot of trade publication research where I was doing a process we call ?listening in? to the discussions of power brokers in the trade press ? when you listen to those folks talk about what their emphases are, and where they would expand their blog network and why, you?ll see most of their focus is on demographics. When you expand out and look at the rest of the media landscape and some of the attention to especially gay sports, but also to gay topics more generally, gay audiences, one of the big reasons for attention to those areas is demographics.
The demographics for outlets focusing on topics along those lines are extremely attractive to sports media outlets and to media outlets more generally. SB Nation, during the period that I was studying them, was particularly interested in attracting what they described as tech-savvy, affluent males, and that was something that was repeated over and over again by their executives and by other folks in the network. When we saw some of their initial expansions, we saw them expanding into areas like consumer electronics ? they started The Verge, which is a sister media outlet to SB Nation focusing specifically on consumer electronics, and they?re also creating a media outlet called Polygon, which is focusing on video games. When we look at why they?re expanding into specific areas, I think it?s less because there?s a compelling need among the folks that are running the network to make sure that they?re inclusive to gay sports, gay athletes, people who are interested in these areas, but moreso for the opportunity to aggregate audiences that fit a specific demographic that advertisers find particularly attractive.
SMW: SB Nation, as of February of this year, was #9 of the major sports website groups, actually ahead of Sports Illustrated and Sporting News on AOL. Obviously, what they?ve been doing has been working. That gets to the next point, which is this pro-business aspect of the sports blogosphere now. When I started my website in 2006 ? that was the same year Awful Announcing started, I think The Big Lead started maybe a year earlier, Deadspin started about a year earlier ? it was a very different sports blogosphere at that time. It really could be considered an alternative. There really wasn?t a lot of corporate interest, and the sports blogosphere was kind of like the Wild West, where the standards were not there yet, and there was no real concern about irritating the wrong people. It really was a lot wilder at that point.
Now what we?ve seen, Deadspin has grown in clout ? they broke the Manti Te?o story, obviously ? they are closer to the mainstream than they are to the alternative. We see that with The Big Lead, which is now part of Gannett with the USA Today Sports Group. What do you think about this mainstream-ization, for lack of a better term, of the sports blogosphere? Is it becoming more mainstream, is it becoming more corporate?
Corrigan: I think you?re right to point out that there certainly were ? and are still ? elements of the sports blogosphere as kind of a Wild West look at sports. I think at the same time, though, there?s always been a fandom element to the sports blogosphere. If we talk about fan discussions at the local sports bar and compare those to the sports blogosphere, they?re not always discussions that align all the time with the interests of either sports media outlets or the sports organizations that the folks are talking about.
At the same time, there is a general sense of an interest and liking of sports among folks that are involved in the sports blogosphere, and I don?t think it?s surprising to see coverage that aligns well with those corporate interests. I do think that when we look at especially the most prominent and successful sports blog networks, we get an emphasis on coverage that is explicitly fan-centric. SB Nation bills themselves as a network that is by and for fans, and I think that is part of the reason they are attractive and successful. When we look at SB Nation, we?re also talking about a company that has been successful in packaging audiences for major corporate advertisers like Bud Light, like Sprint, like Absolut Vodka ? plenty of corporate entities that we traditionally would have seen in the traditional sports media. When we have that advertiser support, we shouldn?t be surprised when the content that?s produced from there isn?t challenging institutions of power.
That?s not to say that the bloggers within SB Nation don?t have a degree of autonomy in what they produce. I think they absolutely do, and to some extent that?s a product of the network?s compensation structure. The bloggers that I talked to ? and these are folks that are putting out content every single day, sometimes several times a day, to relatively large audiences ? were making $200 or less a month. When you have that sort of structure, you can?t present a pink slip as a way to rein in content. So I think we?ve always gotten this tension going on, even within these large, commercial sports blog networks, between a pro-corporate content structure and a degree of autonomy bloggers have to write about what they like in ways that they like, in ways that might challenge those corporate structures. We?re in the blogosphere always seeing that tension playing out, between larger commercialization, but at the same time a degree of autonomy that we might not have seen in traditional journalism.
SMW: I wanted to address the issue of race in the sports blogosphere, and the idea that there are not a lot of African American bloggers that are out there. Do you think that has any merit? Because I?m not necessarily sure that it does.
Corrigan: When we?re talking about issues of race and new media, in similar ways to talking about issues of gender and new media, I think one of the important areas is to focus on issues of both access and competencies in the digital media sphere. What we?re talking about there are questions of the digital divide generally, but also questions of the ways that talking about sports can be exclusionary to certain social groups. I really like the work of Umberto Eco when he talks about what?s called sports chatter, and Michael Messner who studies culture and especially gender in sports media basically makes the arguments that the chatter we have about sports, whether it be on blogs or whether it be at the sports bar, can be an exclusionary process ? a space where certain social groups come to the table with a degree of capital in those discussions that other groups are excluded from. [ed. note: Dr. Corrigan meant to attribute the gendered take on sports chatter to Garry Whannel, not Michael Messner.]
That operates most evidently when we talk about women?s access to sports discussions, but I also think there can be areas where questions of race and social inequality can play into those discussions as well. At the same time, I think that sports conversations ? both in the blogosphere and in other settings ? are a discussion that allow for social groups to interact in ways that other topics don?t always accommodate for as easily. If you?ve got a stock in sports knowledge, or the competencies to talk about sports, you can walk into bars all across the country and strike up a conversation with someone you don?t know. I think that there is some progressive potential in sports blogging as an ice-breaker of sorts for creating the kinds of discussions among different social groups that might not happen otherwise. Whether those discussions can carry out from sports to other spaces is another question, but there are certainly opportunities for sports bloggers to break down cultural barriers that we?re talking about.
SMW: The other issue with race and the sports blogosphere is that the corporate imperative ? the profit imperative ? really forces you to focus on a certain demographic. Like you were saying earlier, these tech-savvy young men ? presumably White, when people say men 18-34, they really mean White men 18-34 ? this is the demographic people are going after. In other to be a really successful sports blog, and have your work picked up by a major corporate entity, you have to have the kind of content that will appeal to that demographic, the kind of voice that will appeal to that demographic. You end up with a very, in terms of race White, in terms of gender male, and in terms of interests mainstream ? you end up with that audience base, and in a lot of ways you end up with that as your author base as well. A lot of sports blogs that not really catered to that demographic in a real way have gone by the wayside, or they?re certainly not doing nearly as well. Do you think the profit imperative is also a major factor here?
Corrigan: I think the demographics question is an interesting one, and from my perspective it?s a huge driver not just of coverage in the sports blogosphere, but elsewhere. There are folks like Matt McAllister at Penn State, Joe Turow at U Penn that make the argument that basically the focus on demographics creates a selection of topics and a way of talking about the world around us that tends to be racist, classist, sexist, ageist, ableist, etc., because of these specific demographics that advertisers are most interested in reaching ? those demographics that are most valuable to them as their target market. To the extent that the sports blogosphere continues the focus on demographics as the primary emphasis of why you would create content that attracts specific audiences rather than others, there?s going to be that reproduction of structural inequities in terms of the types of media that are created for different audiences based on their attractiveness to advertisers.
Now, that?s not to say that there aren?t changes in the interests of advertisers — that you might see more coverage expansions — and I think the OutSports example is a good one of that, especially as more advertisers are interested in reaching gay audiences. But certainly the topical emphasis, at least, is guided by that larger boundary that sports media outlets have to work within. Competing with the demographics perspective is always this opportunity to create compelling content that lots of people want to read. So I don?t want to suggest that advertiser interests drive everything. If bloggers can create compelling content that people want to come to, regardless of race, class or gender, I think that?s always playing, at least to some degree, a counterweight against the demographics emphasis.
SMW: To branch away from the sports blog conversation, you were an instructor at Penn State University up through the disastrous year of 2011. Could you describe what it was like that fall semester of 2011, with the Sandusky story breaking, Paterno?s firing, the student revolt that took place?
Corrigan: It was fascinating for me because I was teaching a course called ?Sports Media & Society? just as the biggest sports media and society story of the year broke locally. In general, this is an awful and terrible episode, but for students in my class and for me as someone who is interested in sports media and society issues, this was a tremendous opportunity for us to look at something that was going on locally and have a little different bit perspective than folks coming at it from the outside. For me, I think the most interesting part of those developments locally was the very divisive positions that were taken by folks in the State College area. I got to see some of those especially playing out in my class as students talked about the case and the implications of it. For me, the thing that was most enlightening was the extent to which it showed us something about how branding works in sports and in sports media.
We talk about branding a lot and cultural importance of brands ? but often times we don?t see how important they are until they start crumbling. From the students that I saw talking about this development in my class, they didn?t just see it as a blow to Penn State, but they saw the way it was being talked about as a blow to themselves and their own identities. I think that was a really telling example of how important brands can be to our own sense of who we are. When students saw coverage of this development as an attack on Penn State ? which I don?t really think it was; I think that was kind of their perception of it ? they also saw it as an attack on themselves. I think that really tells us a lot about how powerful sports and sports branding can be in creating that sense of identification with a team and with athletes and coaches.
SMW: One of the things that was interesting to me in the coverage of Penn State was the idea that State College was subject to this cult of Paterno. While there are certainly people who would fit that bill ? John Ziegler, people like Curt Smith who were very much defending Paterno ? a place like Penn State is such a large university that I can?t imagine the public perception was really that accurate. Since you were there from 2008 to 2011, what was it like at Penn State? Was it a situation where it was basically 90% irrational defense of Paterno, or was it more nuanced?
Corrigan: I did by bachelor?s and my master?s at Florida State, so I was coming from a big football school to a big football school. I remember my friends at Florida State asking me what the football culture was like at Penn State, and I would tell them, first of all, that it was much bigger ? just in terms of the scale and the depth of the investment of fans in Penn State football. But also that it had, if you walked around the tailgates and you went around town, kind of a Norman Rockwell feel to it. You had students doing their beer funnels here and there, but you?d also have parents and grandparents playing with toddlers around the tailgate as well. So it had this college atmosphere but also this very traditional vibe to it as well. That was part and parcel with the image that Penn State football had generally, this sense of tradition and moral rectitude in the way that the team and Coach Paterno and others went about their business.
As a graduate student there, I was never quite as invested in that set of feelings, and there are plenty of other folks in the State College community that didn’t have the same level of affinity as others did ? but it was undoubtedly pervasive in the community. I think the important thing for understanding the relationship between the culture of football in the State College community and the developments of the Sandusky case is in creating an environment within State College where certain individuals and groups were held up on a pedestal and though to be basically beyond questioning in terms of their operations. I don?t want to in any way blame the folks of State College or Penn State for what happened, but when we do hold coaches and institutions like a football team up in that sort of regard, it does create a power dynamic where folks in those positions can overlook the ramifications for others. That for me is the important relationship between the culture and the activities ? you can?t look at the Penn State community and blame the vast majority of people for anything that happened, but at the same time holding these folks up on a pedestal put them in a position to carry out what did happen.
SMW: When the Penn State situation broke, everyone was behind on that story ? ESPN and the mainstream, and also the blogosphere to a large extent. The sports blogosphere, you would think, would have ? not the resources ? but certainly the intention from the beginning was to fill in the gaps that the mainstream left unexamined. Something like the Penn State scandal would be a place where you would imagine having that alternative type of journalism would be indispensable.
Yet with the sports blogosphere, if we look at the biggest stories that the sports blogosphere has broken, we?re looking at Manti Te?o ? which really isn?t that important of a story; an interesting one and an instructive one for journalists, but not important. You look at the Brett Favre story, which was just lurid tabloid stuff. Why haven?t we seen the sports blogosphere tackling the more important issues? We know the sports blogosphere can beat the mainstream, but they?re not beating the mainstream on what matters. Or would you disagree with that?
Corrigan: On the one hand, it?s a question of resources. Bloggers both out of their own interest in being outsiders — but also in the sense that it?s harder and harder in the contemporary media environment to operate any sort of investigative initiative financially — it makes it a hard situation to ask the sports blogosphere, or the blogosphere more generally, to cover stories with any sort of original reporting emphasis that would compare to the journalism we once had. I think that?s a problem not just for the sports blogosphere, but for the media generally and democracy generally ? that we just don?t have the same level of investment in the types of coverage that hold powerful groups accountable. We don?t see the same level of investment being made by new media outlets in investigations that we once saw among the mainstream press that’s being financially dismantled right now.
The stories that you note that the blogosphere has broken tends to be individual-level stories rather than any sort of structural critique. So we get stories like the Brett Favre story and the Manti Te?o story that are, like you said, interesting ? but they?re largely focused on the acts or interests of a specific individual without looking into larger structural questions of power inequities, race, class, gender, etc. That?s kind of a telling example of how new media isn?t necessarily filling-in in those sorts of revolutionary ways that cyberutopians put that spin on blogging in its early days as its potential. We just don?t get those sorts of large-scale structural critiques when much of what the blogosphere has to work with is existing coverage from folks that are working for corporate media.
