Balanced coverage for a change

Breaking news: A new study says the women’s and men’s NCAA Final Four media coverage was virtually equal

For several years, Power Plays’ Lindsay Gibbs has studied mainstream women’s basketball coverage, tracking six newspapers: USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Dallas Morning News, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, and the New York Times. Gibbs monitored these daily publications for at least a week. 

It’s pretty simple, Gibbs explains: Count the number of stories published about women’s sports and tally the number of women’s college basketball and men’s college basketball stories along with the number of women’s sports stories and men’s sports stories in general.

This year, Gibbs, a veteran freelance sports reporter and podcaster, studied the period from April 3 to April 10 and compared it with Tori Burstein’s #CoveringtheCoverage data that she did for Power Plays of the 2021 Final Four. 

USA Today—21 WBB stories, 18 MBB stories—72 total sports stories. 

LA Times—8 WBB stories, 10 MBB stories—66 total sports stories.

Dallas Morning News—8.5 WBB stories, 11 MBB stories—115 total sports stories.

Chicago Tribune—16 WBB stories, 18 MBB stories—95 total sports stories.

Washington Post—21 WBB stories, 16.5 MBB stories—93 total sports stories.

NY Times—11 WBB stories, 13 MBB stories—52 total sports stories.

“In 2021, we only monitored six days of coverage, while this year I monitor eight days,” Gibbs wrote, adding that only 11 percent of the six papers devoted their coverage to the women’s Final Four in 2021 compared to 21 percent to the men’s. 

This year, she points out, “The coverage of the women’s Final Four increased by about 6% between 2021 and 2024.”  

In Gibbs’ estimation, the six newspapers’ women’s sports coverage is getting better, at least 11 percent better.  

“This isn’t only a snapshot of media coverage,” Gibbs told the MSR after her study was released on May 13, “It’s exciting to be able to see the quality in print and to be able to directly compare the progress with 2021.”

As a result, we also looked at the local media coverage by gender, particularly the Star Tribune.  The MSR found the following:

—15 WBB stories, 9 MBB stories, one WBB/MBB combined story, and four WNIT stories (the Gophers reached the finals this season) for a total of 29 basketball-related stories. 

As Gibbs discovered in her study, we also found at least two days where the women’s stories outnumbered the men’s; one day, there was only one WBB story; and one day where there was equal coverage (1 WNIT story and one NCAAM story). 

“Two papers have more women’s stories, four have more men’s stories, but the gap isn’t egregious in any individual instance,” Gibs concluded.

“More coverage brings about more accountability and publicity. It is a crucial part of the growth of women’s sports.”