In a state known for sports, from high school to professional, Tampa Bay is a city that lives and breathes sports. Teams like the Rays (MLB), Buccaneers (NFL), and the Lightning (NHL) are all competing for the hearts an attention of the citizens of Tampa and beyond. In order to win this competition, teams need media exposure. The purpose of this paper is to perform a content analysis of the Tampa Bay Times by looking at the frequency and content of the sport media coverage of the professional sports teams in Tampa Bay from January 29, 2018 to February 16, 2018.
What is content analysis? According to Ungvarsky (2016), content analysis is taking media and evaluating what it says and how it says it. In this case, the media is the Tampa Bay
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Times’ sports section which covers teams in and around Tampa Bay, Florida. Understanding how the media portrays a sports team can be beneficial in improving team image. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers is the sole NFL franchise in Tampa Bay, Florida.
This season, the Buccaneers missed the playoffs with a record below .500. In the Tampa Bay Times, the Bucs were the least covered professional sports team that is located in the city of Tampa. The Buccaneers had only 16 total headlining articles during the time period in which the data was collected. Of those 16 articles, there were 10 opinion pieces. Five of these were negative, four were neutral, and one was positive. Most of the negative articles were aimed at the Buccaneers defense. A headline that read “The Bucs Pass Rush was so Bad, Dirk Koetter Sacked his Friend,” talked about how Dirk Koetter had to fire defensive line coach Jay Hayes who Koetter has “Been buddies with for nearly 40 years,” (Stroud, 2018, February 12). The rest of the 16 articles were five news pieces, and one feature about a former player. The feature was covering hall of famer Derrick Brooks who was “Signing autographs for any fans making a donation of $10 or more to his charity,” (Auman, 2018, February …show more content…
13). Hockey is seemingly an odd fit for a tropical state like Florida, but the Lightning play their home games in Tampa. The Lightning currently sits atop the Atlantic division in the NHL. During data collection, the Lightning came in second amongst professional sport in number of articles written about the team. With 26 articles, there was an array of topics covered by the Tampa Bay Times. Writers gave their opinions in 14 articles. Seven had neutral opinions, four were positive, and three were negative. In an article by Smith, praise was given to Tampa Bay Lightning goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy. The goalie “stopped 42 shots to earn his 30th win of the year with 12 of those saves coming after the Lightning made it 7-4,” (Smith, 2018, February 2). The majority of the rest were news articles, nine in total, and three features. Baseball is known by many as America’s past time, and the Tampa Bay Rays are the baseball team that represents the city of Tampa. Spring training just began for Major League baseball, and the Rays are currently have six wins and seven losses in their exhibition games. The Tampa Times wrote about the Rays 42 times during the data collection phase. 28 articles were simply general news reports about the team. For example, one article covered the Rays choice to build a new stadium in the city of Ybor. The article quotes MLB commissioner Rob Manfred saying, "I think this is an important step. One step at a time. You can't get financing until you know where you are going to build and what the development opportunities are and what the prospects are for long-term success given the location of that site. So it's a really important step." (Topkin, 2018, February 15). Opinions were written on 10 times with five neutral, three positive, and two negative pieces. Rounding out the 42 articles were four features. One of which included a former outfielder, Sam Fuld’s, volunteer work. According to Topkin, Fuld hosted “About 150 campers – kids 8-17 with Type 1 diabetes, plus their friends and siblings,” at the University of Southern Florida (2018, February 1). The Buccaneers are the team that clearly needs to improve their media presence.
Despite the fact that the time period was after the season ended, the numbers for the Bucs were very low. Not to mention that the majority of opinion pieces were negative. Clearly the most effective way to change the frequency and the content of articles written about the Buccaneers would be to win more games. That is easier said than done though. The Buccaneers have already taken steps to appease critics by making staffing changes as noted earlier, but that is only a temporary fix, and if the move doesn’t pan out, it could wind up being worse for the organization’s image. The best way to improve the Buccaneers image and increase coverage would be to engage in community outreach
programs. Of all the articles written about the Buccaneers, only two covered charity and community involvement. One was the article covering Derick Brooks’ charity, and the other was about Clinton McDonald sending veterans to the Super Bowl (Auman, 2018, February 1). Encouraging more of these activities would likely help increase the number of articles written about the Buccaneers, and will distract from the current woes the team is suffering from since the less than stellar season in 2017. The findings in this report are obviously not complete. Key issues with the findings are the period of time and the length of time data was collected. Since data collecting began just before the Super Bowl and Tampa Bay Buccaneers did not even make the playoffs, it stands to reason that the Buccaneers were no longer a hot topic. The same goes for college football teams. Not to mention the Olympics were going on during the collection period which commanded attention. Expanding the length of time over which the data was collected would likely change these results. In conclusion, sports are competitive by nature, so it stands to reasons that teams have to compete when it comes to media coverage. Cultivating an image and strong media presence takes time, planning, and effort in order to be successful. The Rays and Lightning are commanding attention at the moment. The Rays for their big move coming up, and the Lightning for their current dominance. Teams like the Buccaneers have a long and tricky road ahead of them due to their shaky season in 2018, but taking smart steps to improve the content and rate of recurrence published by the Tampa Bay Times would be the most prudent course of action.
Egotistical players, brazen coaches, and disrespectful management can all have a significant effect on the public relations sector of the organization. In the early years, under Jerry Jones, the Cowboys were the glamourous team that everyone supported. They had talented players, an innovative head coach, and a great marketing team. The players always brought their A-game and they could always be counted on to get the job done. Hearing stories about Emmitt Smith, Troy Aikman, Michael Irving and Darren Woodson shows that they were revered. This image, however has regressed into something totally polar to the idea of reverence. Lately the Cowboys have been prone to incidents occurring at the wrong times which leads to losses. They are always in a position to make a positive impact, to make everyone think that they have finally turned the corner, and returned to their “America’s Team” ways, but then something goes wrong. Pundits now have a new phrase for them, which describes their overall status and it is; “they are an accident waiting to happen,” and from what I have seen I couldn’t think of a better phrase
In his editorial "Words Triumph Over Images," Curtis Wilkie blames today’s media for being “reckless” and “a mutant reality show”. He believes that television and radio are “unfiltered”, which causes the quality of journalism for newspapers to be unmatched. Yet, it is unfair to label all media that is not print as lesser because the quality of any media relies on the viewers and the individual journalists, and in drastic situations like a hurricane, reporters may have many road blocks. Any of these aspects can affect the quality of journalism, which invalidates Curtis Wilkie’s claim.
Charles Kenny starts the article with an easily acceptable example. The example that is given is about the Super Bowl and how they “donate the losing team’s shirts to a charity” (Kenny 58). By using football, Charles Kenny is able to pull in a large and preferred audience. He aims towards Americans to read his article and the Super Bowl is a common subject talked between Americans. The placement of the example is also very important.
In “Reporting the News” by George C. Edwards III, Martin P. Wattenberg, and Robert L. Lineberry, the main idea is how the media determines what to air, where to get said stories that will air, how the media presents the news, and the medias effect on the general public. “Reporting The News” is a very strong and detailed article. The authors’ purpose is to inform the readers of what goes on in the news media. This can be inferred by the authors’ tone. The authors’ overall tone is critical of the topics that are covered. The tone can be determined by the authors’ strong use of transitions, specific examples, and phrases or words that indicate analysis. To summarize, first, the authors’ indicate that the media chooses its stories that will air
Intro: In 1946 two members of the New York Giants were found associating with gamblers, trying to fix the NFL Championship Game. These members were suspended and in 1947 the NFL introduced their form of prevention, the injury report (Merritt). Every week NFL coaches have to list their injured players on the NFL Injury Report. Each player has to be listed as either “doubtful,” “questionable,” or “probable” to play that weekend. What a lot of people don’t know is that an ample amount of teams are lying on these reports. By skewing the truth on their player’s injuries it gives that team an advantage. Whether the coaches are putting healthy players on the list, injured players not on the list, or just lying about the severity of the injury, it is all affecting the teams and the fans. I have addressed the problems with the NFL injury report and focused my research on the integrity of the teams and their purpose for lying, how much lying is really going on, and the link between the injury report, the NFL, and gambling.
... Come into Play, but Simplicity is a Key Ingredient. Series: MEDIA IMPACT: Why some Stories have it-and Others Don't. First in a Series. Next: Impact-the Media's Role." Los Angeles Times (pre-1997 Fulltext): 1. Oct 25 1992. ProQuest. Web. 8 Mar. 2014 .
To explain the importance a sports team has on a city, a new avenue for future
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During these difficult economic times sensationalism has become more prevalent in the media. Stories involving sex scandals and child murders have taken over our T.V and internet screens as well as the front pages of our newspapers. The media bias of sensationalism has been used as a sort of escapism for readers. Although it may seem that sensationalism has just started making waves, it has been around for decades. Sensationalism has been influencing viewers and contributing to media bias since the days of the penny press. Sensationalisms long history has been turbulent, self-serving, and influential to today’s reporting practices. With the influence over readers’ sensationalism’s media bias have and will continue to affect media reporting for years to come.
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Sport is never far from controversy. Whether it be alcohol-fuelled misbehaviour, allegations of drug abuse or inappropriate public musings on a thorny political issue, the national press is filled to the brim with sports stars dragging the image of their employers — and the sports they represent — through the proverbial mud.