ABSTRACT
Vikki Orvice’s premature passing from cancer at 56 afforded a moment for the industry to reflect on how sports journalism has changed since The Sun’s then-sports editor, Paul Ridley, offered Orvice a job as a staff football writer in 1995. Some of the bastions of sporting conservatism are changing, and female sports journalists are arguably helping drive that change. Sexist attitudes among sports journalists can manifest themselves in the questions that are put to sportspeople. A study of post-match tennis interviews by researchers in the United States found that sports journalists were more likely to ask women non-game-related questions than men. S. Franks and D. O’Neill refer to the “dominant and resistant male hegemony found in sports”, but suggest that it is not likely to be the case that there is a single reason for why there is a low number of female sports journalists.
