Women's Hoops Blog

Inane commentary on a game that deserves far better


Friday, November 25, 2005

The New York Times does a pretty crappy job of covering women's sports. We only get the paper on Sundays, but last Sunday's Sports section had nary an article featuring an athlete without a Y chromosome. Tonight I clicked on a link to the Times College Basketball page and there was hardly evidence that the women's game exists, let alone in depth analysis or feature articles.

So I got cranky and penned a short letter to sports@nytimes.com. Feel free to send them your own if you have a moment.

"College basketball is played by women as well as by men, but you wouldn't know it from looking at the Times' website. Not a single article on the main college basketball page has to do with the women's game--fans of women's basketball are limited to a link to scores and schedules in the sidebar, with apparently no analysis or feature coverage of the games. Why does the Times do such a lousy job giving space to women's sports? It's not only irresponsible and sexist, it's also neglecting a growing segment of potential customers. I do realize that men's ball is still bigger business than women's ball, but that will never change as long as sports news organizations such as yours cling to a 1960s idea of what is worth writing about.

A dissatisfied, long time Times reader"