Media Credit: Javier Garcia-Albea

As a part of a university program designed to train aspiring sports journalists, I often ask students why they dream of some day becoming a baseball beat reporter, sports columnist or, more often, a part of the anchor team on Sports Center. Their answers often (but not always) run along this line of reasoning: 1) they love sports, but 2) they've missed their chance to become the next great sports phenom, so 3) they've decided that sports journalism is the next best thing. It gives them access to a world they crave to live in.

I don't hear this same line of reasoning among my students who want to cover news or even entertainment ("I really want to be mayor, but I figure that won't work out, so I'd like to cover politics"). Instead, these students want to practice journalism as a craft and vocation, period. They seek to adopt its values and to live its aspirations in whatever they cover.

But sports journalism students may, if not challenged to do otherwise, live the aspirations of sports fans-not journalists. They may seek to identify with athletes and teams, to use sports as a way to socialize with, and perhaps to wager on, their mental mastery of sports through fantasy leagues and betting pools. This "wannabe" culture among sports journalism students, I'm afraid, replicates one in the larger industry. Howard Cosell talked about it years ago when he criticized "jockocracy"-the hiring of former athletes as journalists.

"Wannabes" generally don't make critical or even good reporters and editors. Their allegiances aren't with news consumers, but are, instead, with the athletes, teams and leagues they cover. Perhaps that is one reason why the steroids-in-baseball story took so long to emerge, although sportswriters admit they knew about it for years. One has to wonder what other stories in the public interest (about systematic problems and corruption in sports, including those at the prep level) may have also gone unwritten. Although perceived as fun and games, sports at almost every level in the United States have become big business with consequences beyond the playing fields. Sports journalists have an ethical obligation to provide citizens and consumers with fair and balanced reporting on issues that affect their communities, their pocketbooks and the health and educations of their children.

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