By Fazeena Saleem
DOHA: Qatar is an ideal place to build a sports journalism career, but journalists reporting on the subject should also write about various issues related to games, says an expert.
“Qatar is a good place to make your career with the growth of sport media and there is a need for sport writers who can look for more than the game,” said Craig LaMay (pictured), a visiting professor at Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q).
He also emphasised that collaboration between sport and media is important because sport is part of Qatar’s identity.
LaMay is taking a class on ‘Media, Sport and Society’ at NU-Q for 15 communication and journalism students and business students from the Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar.
In journalism, sport is an important institution because sport and media always had a symbiotic relationship; they have gone together from the beginning. However, LaMay said that sport journalism historically has been the weakest part of journalism as it’s taken merely as entertainment.
“There is another part of sport that we can talk about, so journalists don’t typically cover sport as a serious social institution… Sport journalism always needs to treat it as a serious subject,” LaMay told The Peninsula yesterday.
“Politics of sport or business of sport are stories that typically don’t get coverage anywhere (in the world).
“It’s done by investigative, political or business journalists,” he added.
Sport is the way in which media corporation now build audiences, because it is the only one that still addresses many audiences and some scholars speak about media sport as one institution.
“So it’s an important subject for academics. In Qatar it’s important because sport is part of Qatar’s national and international identity,” said LaMay.
Explaining the class on ‘Media Sport and Society’ he said it’s about sport as a social institution. It teaches about how sport as an institution has a say about things like belonging to a community, how sport makes identity in a larger group.
“It particular speak about sport as Qatar’s identity. I have never been to any country where sport is part of the national identity, it’s mentioned in the Qatar National Vision 2030,” said LaMay.
The Peninsula
