The Great Debate UK

Progress, but women journalists not home free

Linda Kay is a former sportswriter with the Chicago Tribune (and the first woman to write sports for the paper), an associate professor and chair of the journalism department at Concordia University in Montreal. She is author of a forthcoming book called “The Sweet Sixteen” about a group of groundbreaking women journalists in Canada. The opinions expressed are her own. Thomson Reuters is hosting a live blog on March 8, 2011, to mark International Women’s Day.

My students are often surprised to learn that one hundred years ago, women were working as journalists in Canada. According to the 1911 census, some 70 women across the country were categorized as “journalists, editors and reporters.”

It was an exclusive group that had grown incrementally since 1886, when Sara Jeannette Duncan became the first woman hired by a newspaper in Canada.

These early female journalists were extremely talented; to earn a vaunted position on a daily newspaper, they had to be, as they were invariably the only female employed by the paper.

Hired for their literary ability, many were published poets, writers of fiction, or noted essayists. They were hired specifically to write and edit the “Woman’s Page” of the newspaper.

The “Woman’s Page” had become a staple on mass circulation newspapers by the end of the 1800s.

Savvy newspaper proprietors had come to understand that women were the primary purchasers in the family and that advertisers were keenly interested in courting them.

Thus the advent of the “Women’s Page” as a magnet for female readers.

The earliest female journalists had to invent themselves. They had no template to follow. There were no schools of journalism in Canada at the time, and most women born in the late 19th century acquired no more than a high school education at best.

Courageous Stephani Victor pays tribute to women’s day

- Barbara Scarpella-Reed is editor of Fiduciary Services at Lipper (a Thomson Reuters company) and a freelance journalist. The opinions expressed are her own. Reuters is hosting a “follow-the-sun” live blog on Monday, March 8, 2010, International Women’s Day. Please tune in.

Stephani Victor’s life is a portrait of one woman’s will to survive and recreate her story despite great adversity. On December 19, 1995, Victor was standing on the sidewalk in Hermosa Beach, California, when an out-of-control vehicle jumped the curb and crushed her into another car. In order to save her life, doctors had to amputate both legs above the knee. Her will and life force enabled her to reach deep down within herself, defying the odds.

Today, Victor is a Paralympics gold and bronze medal winner, filmmaker and motivational speaker. She will compete in the 2010 Paralympics in Vancouver, Canada, starting March 12, 2010. More than 600 athletes from 40 countries will participate in the games.

She joins in a celebration of International Women’s Day by inspiring all women to commit themselves to the celebration of women’s empowerment as they unite around the world.

Women’s sport sidelined by news media

- Liz King is director of the triathlon website www.TriSpiritEvents.com, and a triathlete with 25 years’ experience, who has raced six Ironman triathlons so far. The opinions expressed are her own. Reuters is hosting a “follow-the-sun” live blog on Monday, March 8, 2010, International Women’s Day. -

Wow, Wellington! You may think I am referring to the city on New Zealand’s north island, about which most people have heard. But no, I am referring to Chrissie Wellington, three times world Ironman triathlon champion. And guess what? She is British.

For those who do not know what Ironman triathlon is, here is a quick resume. Ironman is an extreme version of triathlon, where you first swim 2.4 miles, then cycle 112 miles, then finish off with a full marathon of 26.2 miles. All within 17 hours. No, none of those are typos.

The ever-smiling Chrissie is the world champion in this event, and the current world record holder too. She has completed this feat in 8 hours, 31 minutes, 59 seconds. So, as I said, wow! She was quite rightly voted the Sunday Times Sportswoman Of The Year in 2009.

I recently met her – her trademark smile still on show – and she was giving me some tips on getting over jetlag before we headed off to New Zealand – where I am as I write – having competed in Ironman New Zealand this weekend. This is an amazing event with faultless organisation, and incredible support from the local community in Taupo.

The whole town got involved, with around 10 per cent of the community volunteering to help us athletes who take on this event. That means there are 2,200 volunteers for just under 1,300 competitors – nearly two to one, and boy do they make a difference.

Thing is, can you imagine this happening on this scale in the football and cricket obsessed UK? Funny, you probably didn’t even realise there was an Ironman UK, did you? That is because it gets almost zero coverage. But that seems to be the lot of what some people would term ‘fringe’ sports in the UK.

Gates closing for commercial partners in sport

- Professor Simon Chadwick, Director, Centre for the International Business of Sport, Coventry, UK. The opinions expressed are his own. -

This summer’s Tour de France was truly historic: the race finished without anyone having returned a positive dope test. Monumental! In a sport seemingly beset with drug problems, professional cycling appeared to have turned the corner, started over, seen the error of its ways, cleaned up its act etc.

Some weeks later however, it was back to “situation normal” when Mikel Astarloza, winner of Stage 16 in this year’s race, tested positive for EPO use. To be honest, the only real surprise about this was that the media singularly failed to refer to the test result as “dope-gate” or some such other gating scandal.

Yet gates elsewhere were swinging this summer like those on a disused farm caught in a tornado. The world of sport witnessed scandals ranging from “crash-gate” to “blood-gate” and beyond (even to situations where women were apparently men – gender-gate?). Crash-gate was the most serious of the summer’s attempts at self-implosion, according to some possibly the most serious sporting scandal of all time.

Indeed, there was a sense amongst certain people that the 2008 F1 Grand Prix in Singapore will serve as a headstone on the grave of sporting credibility: we can no longer trust in or rely upon those involved in sport. Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds have admitted their guilt and apparently done the decent thing, but others may well be complicit too.

Just how could something so brazen, so dangerous, have remained secret for so long amongst such a small group of people? From whistle-blowing, to organisation culture, the use (and abuse) of power and the basis on which teams compete, the whole saga has been a sad, pitiful, mangled mess of managerial, organisational and commercial issues.

Blood-gate was a lot less controversial than the Renault fiasco, if for no other reason than it was essentially a domestic drama and wasn’t therefore played out in the glare of international publicity. Moreover, while the likelihood of a physically painful outcome was much greater in the F1 case, Harlequins willingness to feign a physically painful outcome was at the heart of bloody matters down at The Stoop.

What’s a goal (or five) worth?

-Professor Simon Chadwick, Director, Centre for the International Business of Sport, Coventry, UK. The opinions expressed are his own. -

There is a famous song, composed in the run-up to UEFA Euro 96, in which the Lightening Seeds, Frank Skinner and David Baddiel refer to England’s 30 years of hurt (the period at the time since England won its one and only World Cup).

England recently took a step closer towards addressing their continued failure to win world football’s biggest prize, by beating Croatia 5-1 to qualify for next year’s FIFA World Cup in South Africa. In so doing, the team also overcame its two years of hurt, following a failure to qualify for Euro 2008 at the hands of their Croatian rivals.

While the fervent mood amongst passionate English fans and patriots alike will no doubt grow as we progress towards the start of the tournament in June 2010, there is likely to be much more action off the pitch than there is on it – and not necessarily just in England, in all of the countries that have teams which qualify for South Africa.

Indeed, as we get closer to the 11th June kick-off, World Cup micro-economies will start emerging domestically and internationally across the world.

Many English, Korean and Brazilian fans will already have booked their flights, arranged their hotels, possibly even have bought their replica shirts, flags and hats, diverting expenditure away from other industrial sectors or from their savings accounts. During English summers, the intensity of such expenditure is becoming legendary, if not mind-blowing.

Whether bedecking one’s car in flags and stickers, hanging a banner out of the bedroom window, buying the latest England merchandise, bulk-buying beer and burgers for a garden barbeque or relentlessly purchasing packs of stickers for a World Cup album collection, all are becoming the essence of what football tournaments have become.