Just How They Drew It Up: How In-House Reporters Fit Themselves Into the Sports Media System

Abstract

This paper explores how in-house sports reporters—those who write for team- and league-branded websites—locate themselves within the sports media production complex. It builds from perspectives on professionalism that view it as a dynamic process of defining boundaries and building relationships between systemic stakeholders. The interview data presented here find that in-house reporters accentuate professional similarities to beat reporters and use this identity to build unique roles in sports organizations’ corporate structures. This push to define themselves as a distinct job category within the constellation of sports media professions speaks to the active work occupational groups engage in, and is reshaping the media system. The paper argues for a broader reconsideration of professional definitions, actors, and relationships within the sports media system as digital technology and other changes have altered preexisting relationships.

Making soufflé with metal: Effects of the coronavirus pandemic on sports journalism practices

“…For instance, in-house reporters might refrain from producing stories that are too critical in exchange for greater access to certain sources (Moritz and Mirer, 2021). However, the responses of the in-house reporters I interviewed did not differ significantly from those of the other reporters, in line with Mirer's (2016Mirer's ( , 2019Mirer's ( , 2022 findings that "most hired into this role view themselves as journalists" (2019, abstract). The responses from the two in-house reporters are therefore considered similarly to the rest of the responses in the findings.…”

The Influence of North American Ownership on the Business, Management, and Communication Model of Spanish Professional Football: A Case Study of Real Club Deportivo Mallorca (2016–2021)

“…As Mirer (2021) pointed out, in this research, sports journalists understand that “the communication cabinet has become just another means of communication. The cabinet does not work for the media but for the fans” (Interviewee 3).…”

“…The new digital environment has substantially modified the relationship between the media and sports organizations (Lobillo-Mora & Muñoz-Vela, 2016; Lobillo-Mora & Smolak-Lozano, 2019; Moragas et al, 2003; Sanahuja-Peris, 2012). In a digital environment, the setting up of corporate media, first, and then the definitive conversion of clubs into content factories that create their own content and control its distribution to the final consumer (Mirer, 2021), as recommended by Disney CEO Robert Iger (2019), generates a distancing between sports information professionals and organizations, in what some authors define as a “process of disintermediation” (Becerra, 2014; Price et al, 2013).…”

“…In other words, in the current digital context, apart from the media, other actors—such as sports organizations—produce multiplatform media content that is directly consumed by fragmented audiences (Rojas-Torrijos & Pérez-Curiel, 2020). As Mirer (2021) states, clubs’ in-house reporters become essential to control the media agenda by sports organizations in order to not depend exclusively on the mediation of sports journalists to reach their supporters. Hence, new tensions between communication departments and sports journalists can rise due to the common wish to control the media agenda.…”

“…This professionalization of the management model assumed by the club’s executives also occurs at a moment when corporate communication practices are changing because of the digitalization of society (Rojas-Torrijos & Pérez-Curiel, 2020; Mirer, 2021) and, as a consequence, a process of disintermediation between the media and sports organizations can take place. Just as Ginesta et al (2019) found when analyzing the relationship between RCD Espanyol of the Chinese tycoon Cheng Yansheng and the Catalan sports media, in Mallorca there is a distance between the sports press and the club.…”