Michael Oriard: The Commercialization Of Sports With Newspapers

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The piece still gave the information, but with a riveting tone, a change people desired. Anderson argued that people quickly grew tired of this over descriptive writing and by 1957 the style changed again to be informative and entertaining, but not as descriptive as the articles in the 1920s. This move was led by Larry Merchant, sports editor for Philadelphia’s Daily News. Authors such as Michael Oriard, also credit the rise of sports with newspapers. Oriard is the author of several books about football such as Reading Football: How the Popular Press Created an American Spectacle in 1993 and King Football: Sport and Spectacle in the Golden Age of Radio and Newsreels, Movies and Magazines, the Weekly and the Daily Press in 2003. He has direct …show more content…
He stated that if someone read about the game in the newspaper, they would be encouraged to buy a ticket for the next game. They were also presented as family events. The New York Sun explained a typical baseball crowd in an article printed June 16, 1884, it stated, “…good nature, affability, and friendliness of the crowd… Men exchange options freely about the game with persons they never saw before and everybody seems good-natured and happy.” Some reporters wrote their articles as sales pitches to encourage readers to see the game. Washington and Karen argued that there were fans who disliked the commercialization of sports in newspapers. They felt it lessened sports and turned it into a commodity. Those people resented media involvement, most fans however, became more interested in sports due to their media attention, so much so that it turned into community pride. Fans would consider themselves part of the team, and when they talked about the team they would use the term, “we.” That pride sometimes turned hostile, fans would become aggressive towards the fans of other teams, thinking of them as their opponents or enemies, it turned into a contest of “us” versus “them.” It was undeniable that during this time newspapers impacted people’s thinking about sports. Had newspapers not existed, or not been offered as a cheap price, sports may not have grown the way they did in the late

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