williams

Of the many outstanding components of her game, Serena Williams may best be known for her commanding serve. Those serves, unleashed over the course of a 27-year professional career, arguably heightened the power and intensity of the women’s game, forcing her opponents to game plan for each wicked volley. To those chronicling her exploits as one of the world’s best tennis players, Williams served up a different challenge. As a scholar of sports journalism, I have observed how its practitioners have struggled to find their footing when it comes to establishing consensus about what exactly constitutes good sports journalism. Williams’ presence as a Black woman in a historically white, patriarchal sport, her commitment to activism and her willingness to bare her personal challenges to the ...

“Hanged.” The front page of the New York Daily News said it all in one word on Aug. 13, 2014. Above the capital letters, which filled nearly a third of the page, was a photo of comedian Robin Williams with a somber expression, dead at age 63. The headline, unfortunately, contravened the most basic recommendations of the World Health Organization and suicide prevention experts for how the media should cover suicide, including “toning down” accounts, to avoid inspiring similar deaths. News of Williams’ death appears to be associated with a nearly 10 percent rise in the number of suicides in the United States in the five months that followed, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE. That increase was especially large among men ages 30 to 44, whose suicide rate rose...

Tag: williams

Serena Williams Forced Sports Journalists To Get Out Of The ‘Toy Box’ – And Cover Tennis As More Than A Game

Robin Williams’ suicide was followed by a sharp rise in ‘copycat’ deaths