Sports journalism

Journalism in sports is a kind of writing that focuses on providing coverage of events and information related to athletic contests and events. The first instances of sports journalism date back to the early 1800s, when it was aimed at members of the social elite. Since then, sports journalism has evolved into an essential component of the news industry, with many newspapers now including dedicated sports sections.

There was a rise in the amount of sports coverage in periodicals as a direct result of the growing popularity of sports among people of the middle class and the lower class. The demand for sports led to the development of media outlets that are exclusively devoted to covering sports, such as Sports Illustrated and ESPN. There are several sub-genres of sports journalism, such as play-by-play and game summaries, as well as analysis and investigative journalism on significant happenings in the sport. The advent of technology and the internet has brought about massive shifts in the landscape of sports journalism, which is currently contending with many of the same challenges that the more general category of print journalism is contending with, most notably an inability to cover costs as a result of declining subscriptions. The present decade has seen a proliferation of new types of online writing, such as blogging and tweeting, which have stretched the limits of sports journalism.

The beginnings of what is now known as modern sports journalism may be traced back to the early 1800s, when information related to sports began to emerge in print media. At the beginning, horse racing and boxing were the only sports that were covered on an irregular basis. In the coverage, less emphasis would be placed on the actual incident, and a greater emphasis would be placed on the larger societal background. Among the social elite, there was a great deal of interest in horse races between the North and the South as well as boxing matches between the United States and England. Pierce Egan, a well-known British sportswriter, is credited with coining the term "the Sweet Science" as an epithet for prizefighting at the beginning of the nineteenth century. More specifically, Egan used the term "the Sweet Science of Bruising" to describe the bare-knuckle fight scene in England at the time.

As a result of its prohibitive cost, the general populace was not a key demographic target for newspapers in the 1820s and 1830s. Instead, these publications catered primarily to the social elite. As the 20th century drew near, a number of significant shifts took place that ultimately led to an increase in the amount of sports journalism that was published in mainstream publications. The first development was the introduction of the penny press, which made the creation of newspapers less expensive and more in the tabloid form. Instead of depending on circulation to cover their production expenses, newspapers started adopting advertising as a revenue stream to do so.