ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses how the bases of sports journalism's cultural authority are being transformed in the digital age. Sports journalism’s occupational boundary work is built around its accreditation to the professional sports environment. Sports journalism has legitimised insider access to sport through its professional ideology while building a powerful occupational mythology around its daily rituals and cross-media presence. These processes have enabled sports journalists to lay claim as the principal sense-makers and constructors of meaning around sport. However, sports journalism’s access to the professional sports environment has been de-stabilised by shifts in internal newsroom editorial policy and external source relations prompted by digital technology. Sports journalists are increasingly focusing on greater concentration of sports coverage due to the new economic landscape of web hits and page impressions. Consequently, the proliferation of sports reporters attending sports events on a global scale is under threat due to its heavy resourcing requiring justification through substantive story views. Further, sports journalists are finding insider access severely restricted by clubs and organisations, which are content providers on websites and want exclusivity for their own personnel. The chapter finishes with a contemplation of what the future may hold for sports journalism’s cultural authority.
