Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia
Abstract
For a country whose identity is much bound up with sport, little research has been done so far into Sports journalism in Australia. This study traces the changes that have occurred in the reporting of sport in the West Alustralian between 1901 and 1971. This time span has been chosen to cover the period from Federation to the point when sport acquired its own section at the back of the newspaper and sports editor Ted CoIlingwood retired after 32 years in the job. In this seventy year period, January and July of every seventh year are taken as a sample to map out the developments in sports journalism. The months January and July have been chosen so as to capture both summer and winter sports. The newspaper\u27s editions of these two months in the eleveo periods were assessed both quantitalively and qualitatively. The quantitative study shows the amount of sport reporting, all the column space devoted to the various sports. It confirms that the amount of sports reporting has been on a steady increase ever since 1901, except for tbe war year 1943
