Comments | falcadore: Motorsport and the Print Media

falcadore

Motorsport and the Print Media

Feb 18, 2011 13:52

I'm currently reading Craig Lowndes' new book "The Inside Line". It's a book which essentially explains his life today (or late 2010) as a person and as modern V8 Supercar driver. A large part of the book is a translation to layman's terms of what V8 Supercar racing is. Nuts and bolts stuff, race engineering, race driving, fitness training, diet, ( Read more... )

media, v8 supercar, craig lowndes

Comments 9

miwahni February 18 2011, 11:14:34 UTC

Lack of newspaper coverage has been a problem for years and years. If we relied on the dailies we'd have no idea what was going on in V8 Supercars. As for GP, unless Mark Webber is doing well, it rarely gets a decent write-up ( ... )

falcadore February 18 2011, 14:25:34 UTC

I don't have the figures to hand, they came from my memory of Australian Bureau of Statistics figures that came out last year sometime.
The one sport that did get significant female figures was Tennis. Hardly surprising really as it was the only one of the major sports depicted with significant female on screen participation. (Netball wasn't in the list).

miwahni February 19 2011, 08:48:32 UTC

So you're saying that female participation in a sport is directly related to the amount of air-time that the female participants in a sport get?
I wonder what attracts us to any particular sport in the first place. I've grown up watching AFL (VFL!) and cricket, because these are sports that my father liked to watch (yes, he was born in Victoria). Motor racing entered the agenda when I was 10, and went to Bathurst for the first time. Standing on the mountain, feeling the ground shake as the Falcon GTHOs rumbled past, hooked me for life! So in my case it was parental influence, definitely, that got me hooked (even if I refused to follow Essendon like my father did).

falcadore February 21 2011, 13:19:42 UTC

I'm going to have to dig the report out now. Gimme a few moments...

anonymous February 18 2011, 12:02:35 UTC

the one sport in Aus that does have a big female interest demographic is the AFL. What do they do differently?

1. in Melbourne anyway - Afl is a big part of the cities culture.
2. No cheerleaders. Carlton, Brisbane and Sydney tried it in the 80's, and it was a failure. If cheerleaders bring more people into the ground in other sports - who do they bring in? More yobbo element perhaps?
3. The AFL just get on with promoting the sport and promoting involvement in the club - look at member numbers(something League has only discovered in the last 5 or so years). The its your club, its your sport attitiude. Which also translates into point 3.
3. A long history of female involvement at the top level of clubs administration.

Something to think about there for all sports.

miwahni February 19 2011, 08:40:08 UTC

Sorry, you left out the most important reason - fit guys in tight shorts. Just sayin'.... *g*

falcadore February 28 2011, 09:16:47 UTC

There are a very large number of women working in motorsport, some of them even poineering positions, for example journalist Biranit Goren was the driving force behind new media gaining respectability with the FIA, the website she spearheaded, Atlas Formula One, was the first internet-only publication to be granted accreditation by the FIA ( ... )

dragontail February 19 2011, 23:44:41 UTC

A very good question, and one that those of us working within those organisations ask repeatedly and loudly. The only view we can form is that those in charge of said organisations think they know what the public want, and are unwilling to shift from those self-generated beliefs even in the face of evidence. Once example I can give is from an interstate newspaper where friends of mine work... the editor announced a shift in focus so that education and health stories would be given the highest prominence. Said editor believed she was doing the right thing because "that's what is most important to readers". Circulation plummeted, she lost her job and her replacement went back to focusing on crime and sports stories. Circulation recovered somewhat, but the damage was done. Newspaper readers, as a rule, don't tend to come back after being burned.

Now, I work for the one newspaper in the country that does focus on motorsport. Our paper's one of the premier sponsors of the local V8 race, we have a two-man motorsport reporting team all year ( ... )

falcadore February 21 2011, 07:22:24 UTC

I know the Gold Coast Bulletin is similar, or at least it was in regard to the Indy. Getting a press pass was harder and harder as each year the Bulletin would take up more and more desks.