ABSTRACT
Sports journalism was placed in a unique position during the pandemic because of the cessation of all forms of sport. Sports journalists were required to fall back on their core journalistic skills of working their contacts and finding stories now that they were deprived of the routinised and on-diary sources of information. Once sport resumed, there were fresh challenges for sports journalists as they had to exercise their critical judgment and professional distance in scrutinising the decision-making of major leagues and the ethical and health implications of this. However, sports journalists were expected to promote and publicise the return to sport and display sufficient enthusiasm. Sports clubs and organisations also used the pandemic as an opportunity to restrict journalistic access further, with the shift to Zoom press conferences creating professional anxiety over what the long-term future would look like.
