Via After Atalanta, a link to USC professor Dr. Michael Messner 's post on the study he just completed (Gender in Televised Sports: News and Highlights Shows, 1989-2009).

I post this not just to inform, but to remind:

1) If you want coverage of women's sports, click on the dang links -- that translates into editors and number crunchers thinking, "Oh, someone is interested. Perhaps I should tell the advertisers."

2) If you want coverage of women's sports, write encouraging and appreciative notes to those who DO write about women's sports. It's a lonely world out there, and it's really nice to know (as a writer) that someone has taken the time to reach out. (Oiy, does that sound like a Hallmark ad?)

3) Consider paying for coverage. Case in point: Remember when Mechelle's work got tucked behind the ESPN Magazine/Insider block out? People were upset and unwilling to pay $4 a month to read her stuff. (Granted there are some reasons to object to ESPNMag's coverage of women's sports... but that's another story.) What does that tell editors and advertisers? I imagine that, in the not too distant future, this will become the norm.

If we don't think writers deserve to be paid a fair wage for what they write (just as a freelancer what their "per hour rate" breaks down to) we won't get the coverage the game deserves.