The increased number of sports amongst the middle and lower class led to more coverage of sports in publications. The motive for sports resulted in sports-only media such as Sports Illustrated and ESPN. There are many different kinds of sports journalism, ranging from play-by-play, game recaps to analysis as well as investigative journalism on important developments in the sport. Technology and the internet age has hugely changed the sports journalism space as it is struggling with the same problems that the category of print journalism is struggling with, mainly not being able to cover costs due to falling subscriptions. New forms of internet blogging and tweeting have pushed the boundaries of sports journalism.
Modern sports journalism finds its roots as it started to appear in newspapers in the early 1800s. At the beginning, the sports sporadically covered were horse racing and boxing. The focus of the coverage would be less on the event itself. In the early 19th century, popular British sportswriter Pierce coined the term "the Sweet Science" as an epithet for prizefighting — or more fully "the Sweet Science of Bruising". During the 1820s and 1830s, the demographic target for newspapers was the social elite, as newspaper was too expensive for the common man. Approaching the 20th century, several important changes occurred. The first was the advent of the channel which allowed for cheaper and tabloid style of newspaper production. Newspapers also began using advertising to pay for their production costs.
The 1920s has called the "Golden Age of American Sports". Baseball became the national pastime, and radio and newspaper coverage increased. The New York Herald was the first newspapers to publish consistent sports coverage. The New York World was the first newspaper to have a full times sports department. A study showed that in 1880 only 0.4% of space in the newspaper was for sports. By the 1920s, that proportion had risen to 20%. During this time, newspapers focused on play-by-play coverage and game recaps of the sport events. Local publications started hiring reporters who were tasked with following all developments pertaining to the team. This included traveling with the team to interview the players. Teams also started constructing dedicated sections called press box in the stadiums for the press to sit and note the game.
As technology introduced new developments like the radio, television and the internet, the focus of sports shifted from the play-by-play to statistical analysis of the game and background pieces on the players. This was also coupled with a huge increase in sports amongst the public. The increased popularity of football, basketball and hockey meant more content to publish. This led to the creation of journals like Sports Illustration, first published in 1954, was one of the first publications to lonely focus on sports. Sports Illustrated was the brainchild of HENRY who felt that the established publishers at the time were not taking advantage of the public's massive appetite for sports. With issues, Sports Illustration was able to produce more classic journalistic as the writers had more time to research and conduct longer interview with the players and coaches.
There has been a major change that more sports teams are switching to using analytics. A large reason for this shift is many articles being published about the increased benefit of using analytics in a game. As there is data collected about every instance in every sport, sports data analysis has increased.
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