ABSTRACT
This chapter advances the theory of sports journalism scholarship by outlining two preliminary conceptual models. The first is the development of a typology of sports journalism, highlighting five types: home focus, cheerleader, audience centric, personal reflector and critical watchdog. The typology of Australian sports journalism has some similarities with those developed in previous scholarship of general forms of journalism. However, there are elements specific to sports journalism, including aspects related to the roles and routines of sports reporting. The field of Australian sports journalism is then mapped, detailing amounts of journalistic, economic and total capital. The mapping reflects the strong influence of commercial elements in contemporary media, with the majority of items situated towards the economic capital pole. By locating types of classifications, media, news and staff, it helps to gain an understanding of the levels of capital and power, pressures and forces, and dominant and dominated actors within the field. These two theoretical contributions provide an important perspective on the many practical elements of the study.
