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Random Media Goodness

Jill

Over the past two hours, the New York Times has had two images on its front page (at least that I’ve seen). This one in a story about Olympic athletes raising awareness about Darfur:

athletes

And one that wasn’t exactly this photo (I forgot to grab it while it was up), but similar, in an article about the Final Four:

basketball

Upside: Not only do we have two photos of women on the front page of the Times online, but both images are women playing sports. The first image is paired with a story about a mixed-gender group of athletes; the woman’s image was still picked to represent the group, and she’s imaged in action, not as a sexy, coiffed representation of a cause. Plus, women’s sports are deemed worthy of front-page coverage, which certainly doesn’t happen every day.

Downside: This article about women’s basketball leads with:

Nothing comes between Tina, Kaili and Epiphanny. They are like the friends on “Sex and the City,” only they wear Nikes instead of Manolos, and meet for basketball, not brunch.

I just keep repeating to myself: Baby steps.

9 thoughts on Random Media Goodness

  1. Fix the second link, Jill, it’s the same as the first.

    Given that the story is about women who play for Rutgers — the same women who played for them last year when Don Imus made his infamous remark — you’d think that the Times would be more careful.

    And go Rutgers. C. Vivian Stringer deserves a title more than any other coach in the game.

  2. I think the softball shot is even better because it’s the follow through of a “I just hit a home run (or at least a long double)” shot as she looks up…we’ve seen it a billion times with David Ortiz and Bonds but from what i’ve seen, pretty rare in softball as the editors and photogs always seem to pick the high-fiving, the smiling, the celebrations or rarely the slide home or mid pitch delivery.

  3. I offer this for consideration- arguably the biggest name in Maine sports for over a decade:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cindy_Blodgett

    Watching Cindy play all those years was like watching a basketball clinic! And now she’s coming full circle- it’s gonna be fun to watch her recruit girls, build her teams, and pass along her experiences and knowledge. She just plain-out rocks.

  6. The first time I heard men discussing women’s basketball amongst themselves, without a woman present, and without any sort of tokenism or reference to men’s basketball, was in 1995-96, on the bus in the Hartford area. UConn’s women’s team had won the tournament in 1995 (the men’s team was several years off from winning theirs), and Connecticut is insane for UConn basketball. And if the women’s team is winning and the men’s isn’t, well, then, suddenly, it’s all about the women’s team. But it has seemed to last.

    In fact, I remember listening to the radio once when they were giving away UConn basketball tickets as a prize, and the DJ actually apologized to the winner that the tickets were for the men’s team, and not the women’s team. The women’s team regularly sells out games in the Hartford Civic Center (16K or 20K seats, I forget which) and tickets are scalped.

  7. Well you’ll definitely hear more about it now that UConn is gonna play Stanford in the Final 4. Candice Wiggins is a superstar out here in the Bay Area right now. And the last two nights, SportsCenter led off with coverage of the women’s tournament. How could they not, though, with LSU earning their 5th straight trip to the Final 4, or Wiggins dropping 40+ (twice!), Candace Parker fighting off two dislocated shoulders in the same game and getting the assist on Hornbuckle’s 28-foot 3-pointer that put A&M out of reach, or Maya Moore hitting that 3 off the screen to put UConn up 5 late? And it’s hard not to cheer for coaches like Stringer, Geno, Van, and Pat Summit.

    The women’s game is finally getting some of the attention it deserves. (And remember, they didn’t institute the women’s NCAA tournament until 1982.) Makes it a lot easier to show my baby girl all the things women can do and what else they can excel at.

  8. Stanford playing UConn is agony; my two least favorite teams in women’s hoops. This Cal Golden Bear will hold his nose and root for Candice Wiggins and her squad; if Candice can play Candace in the national title game, we’ll have some goodness.

    But I grieve that CVS still can’t win the big one, though I rejoice in the Scarlet Knights recruiting class.

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