Women in Sport Media

12/01/2016 5:15 PM

By Jaclyn Clark, Sports Communication, ’18

 

The annual Charley Steiner Symposium put on by Bradley University’s School of Sports Communication brought many different speakers than the inaugural event last year. One panel in particular highlighted women in the field and challenges that they have had to overcome throughout their professional journeys.

Specifically, the Women in Sports Media panel addressed current issues with a range in panelists. Panelists included Kaylee Hartung (ESPN and SEC Net Reporter), Diane K. Shah (one of the first female sportswriters), Alyson Footer (national correspondent for MLB.com), and Lori Shontz (former sports reporter, now instructor at the University of Oregon), with Charley Steiner moderating. Topics discussed were how the game has evolved for women sportswriters ranging in the many experiences each panelist had.

The panelists all compared discrimination stories. For example, Ms. Shah described a time when she walked into a locker room and the coach immediately fell silent. The coach pulled her aside and told her that he would only speak to her in the hallway. She explained how she laughed it off and made the most of it, by doing her job in the hallway, however this ended up paying off for her in the end. Later on in the season, the team she was covering had just lost a postseason game, so everybody was upset inside of the locker room. As soon as she entered the locker room, expecting to be kicked out once again, the coach came up to her and ignored every other reporter in the area to field her questions. Ms. Hartung, the youngest on the panel said that in this day in age she hasn’t necessarily experienced those issues that the veterans in the field and on the panel had.

The panelists also shared stories of people they had worked with in the past who might have been particularly difficult, or exceptionally welcoming. They provided advice to those in the room hoping to be sitting in their shoes one day on how to succeed. The panelists all agreed that one of those ways was to have a sense of humor. To be a woman in the sports field, you need to have a good sense of humor and laugh a lot of the comments off, because otherwise they’ll eat at you for your entire career. Overall, topics ranging from current careers, interesting stories, as well as advice for the audience members were all discussed amongst these professionals that many audience members learned from.

The program in particular aims to address many different issues, all depending on what is currently happening in the world. Dr. Paul Gullifor, chair of the department of Communications at Bradley said, “It’s more driven by topic.  In other words, what topics need to be addressed and THEN, what speakers will be experts to address that topic.”

The Steiner Symposium is just one of the ways that Bradley aims to educate students with real-world experiences being brought to them on campus to learn from. Other ways the School of Communications at Bradley aims to do this is by providing a student run news station with current equipment, letting students run production for athletic events on ESPN3, and even giving students the opportunity to host their own radio shows.

The Steiner Symposium doesn’t necessarily only target Sports Communication majors at Bradley however. The planning committee has made an effort to bring in panelists that students in majors such as sociology or health science could learn from. Dr. Gullifor stated, “We choose topics that cut across race, gender and even major.  Not just our majors by the way, but for example, the panel on Paralympics appeals to sociology, physical therapy, etc.”

Overall this program is something that will continue in the future annually, and cover ranging topics in order to address more than just students in the School of Sports Communication. With the list of prestigious guests the school has brought in the past two years, it will be interesting to see who makes it to the event in the future. In just the first two years of the Symposium however, the turnout and reviews among students will be hard to beat for the future.