By Emily Mathis
ESPN has just recently launched a new blog called ESPNW for women. The blog will feature news about the WNBA, women’s college sports and of course news from the NBA and NFL. And before you ask: no pink will be in the color scheme of the blog.
So it seems that ESPN is trying to open up their base to include the multitude of sports viewers that are women. But is the blog really the answer?
I read an article about the new blog on the NY Times site and from the looks of it a lot of people are mixed on whether this is a step in the right direction. It seems some worry that it will create more segregation while others think that it will be an excuse for ESPN to not cover women’s sports, more so than they already do. According to the article only 8% of ESPN’s sports programming is devoted to women’s sports and last year only 1.4 % of Sport’s Center included women’s sports.
While some wonder if this blog is just a stepping stone for a new ESPN channel, I have to say that I agree that it might not be the best step for women’s sports. I think that if ESPN wants to cater to their female audience then they should simply give women in sports more airtime. Maybe ESPN just needs to stop thinking that ESPN is a boys’ club and recognize that women not only enjoy sports but play them too.