A different look, a different take, and responsibility

Nearly everyone looks in a mirror daily, but I think we all sometimes forget that we look different. When it comes to the sports journalism world, that’s when we are reminded.

After a Skype session with ESPN’s Jason Whitlock on Monday, where we discussed race and culture in the context of sports, the class started talking about certain situations in which a minority perspective
was left out. There was an instance a number of years ago when a newspaper headline read “Dread

Scott,” which trivialized the life of an enslaved African-American who, in the 1800s, unsuccessfully sued for his freedom. Leon Carter told us this story, and mentioned that he had asked an editor there if a
person of color had seen the headline before it went to print. The answer was “I don’t know.”

Mr. Carter went on to say that the sports journalism industry needed people who “look like us.” While
I’m not African-American, I am female in a male-dominated business, and there’s no doubt that I look
different from most of the people I work with. When I cover Kentucky basketball, I’m the only female
beat writer. I’m one of two female beat writers covering Kentucky football. In my job, I’m often the only female in a sea of middle-aged, white, male faces. It’s tough sometimes to be different, but I know that people like me, as well as everyone here at the Sports Journalism Institute, has the responsibility of
representing minorities and differing viewpoints.
It isn’t that middle-aged white males don’t do their jobs well—usually they do. But sometimes when
you’ve spent your entire life around the same viewpoints, you don’t see the other side. That’s what
people like us are for, and that responsibility is one of the biggest things that has resonated with me
during my time at SJI so far.

--Ashley Scoby