Defining Moments in Journalism by Woodhull Nancy J.;Snyder Robert W.;Woodhull Nancy;Snyder Robert; & Robert W. Snyder

Author:Woodhull, Nancy J.;Snyder, Robert W.;Woodhull, Nancy;Snyder, Robert; & Robert W. Snyder
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2017-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

12

Women Sportswriters—Business as Usual

Mary Schmitt

I would have killed for one of those bathrobes. When I first started covering the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves for the St. Paul Pioneer Press in 1989, the team provided big, plush, deep-blue bathrobes for each of the players to wear to and from the locker-room shower and, presumably, while I interviewed them.

No matter what the topic, they always looked rather debonair, lounging in front of their lockers wearing those big cushy robes, sort of like actors wearing smoking jackets. Despite what could have been an awkward situation, they always managed to look relaxed and comfortable.

In fact, as the season wore on and they got more and more used to my presence in the locker room after the game, they got more and more comfortable. So comfortable, in fact, that some players stopped wearing the robes, trading them in for towels or, in some cases, abandoning any cover-ups whatsoever.

Now this was a conundrum. In an odd way, losing the robes and towels was a signal that they had accepted my presence in the locker room. Though I certainly would have been more comfortable had they elected to continue wearing them, I was hesitant to bring this up since I would be calling attention to the fact that this was an uncomfortable situation.

What’s a girl to do?

In the end, I decided not to do anything. By careful positioning and peripheral vision—not to mention that woman sportswriter’s trick of carrying a really big notebook to blot out anything you don’t want to see—I could tell who was and wasn’t dressed, and I’d wait until a player was sufficiently clothed so that neither of us would be embarrassed during an interview.

It’s a process that has served me well in my 20 years of reporting. But every woman sportswriter or broadcaster in the country—and there are more than 500 of us, including editors and public relations people—has to decide for herself how to handle the situation.

Having done that, we can get on with doing the jobs we have been hired to do. And that is a measure of how much women reporters have become a part of the sports beat, which was perhaps the last hurdle for women seeking equality in journalism.

When asked for advice on how to handle the locker-room situation—and it seems as if that is the only question people want to ask women in sports media about our jobs—I have one rule of thumb: If you act professionally, you’ll be treated professionally.

In most cases. I have been lucky to avoid any controversy in my career. Oh, sure, I’ve been yelled at in a locker room. But it was because I was a reporter, not because I was a woman—an important distinction.

Several of my colleagues have not been as fortunate. And I’m not talking about the pioneers in my field—women like Mary Garber, Tracy Dodds, Lesley Visser, Diane K. Shah, Melanie Hauser or Betty Cuniberti—who actually stood outside locker rooms waiting for athletes to come out and talk to them after they’d finished talking to all the men reporters inside the locker room.

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