Success Is Everything: Local Newspaper Coverage of Collegiate Women's Basketball Programs, 1992-2008 (2010)

Undergraduate: Kelsey Hamilton

Faculty Advisor: Debashis Aikat
Department: Journalism & Mass Communication

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The study examined the extent of local newspaper coverage of four successful women’s basketball teams in comparison to the men’s basketball teams beginning in 1992, 20 years after Title IX. The selected schools for the study were University of Connecticut, University of Tennessee, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Stanford University. A content analysis of 2,780 articles was performed to determine the extent of coverage, which included article topic, article word length, presence of a visual aid, page location and reference to media. The results of the content analysis showed that there was a statistically significant difference in front page placement and article page location when compared with gender. Yet, the other elements of coverage were roughly equal when gender of the article was compared. While women’s basketball teams received more coverage than previous studies have suggested, they still did not receive overall equal coverage in comparison to the men’s basketball teams. The study suggested that men's basketball is the dominant team, and coverage of women's basketball seems to be the result of how successful they are in comparison to the men's basketball. Success matters in terms of how women’s basketball teams are being covered in their local newspapers.