The past week has been filled with news stories on the debt ceiling, children kidnapped & killed, or terrorist attacks overseas. While all of these stories are terrible, I chose to write about a happier topic that has been talked about for months. The NFL lockout between owners and players came to and end today as both sides finally settled upon a new Collective Bargaining Agreement for the next ten years. (Before getting into details of this story I should first describe the difference between a “lockout” & a “strike”. A strike is when a group of workers decide not to work so that owners’ net gain is affected. A lockout is when owners stop work for laborers, causing economic suffering for those workers who depend strictly on their line of work. So in this case, because the players were voting to decertify the union and leave the owners open to possible anti-trust lawsuits. The result of this was the owners called a lockout on the league, but of course various groups of NFL players filed a class-action lawsuit and so the U.S. Congress has to intervene and hold an investigation to see whether or not the owners did break the Donelly Act. This may go way over some people’s heads and I hope I described this as best as I could without writing a thesis paper. I guess if I could make this long story short, even though this is about football this does matter and belong in our news because it is part of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935.)
Though this issue has been going on for only four months, it is still the longest labor dispute in NFL history and so has been watched closely by many news sources. A few days ago owners made the announcement that they had all voted to agree upon a new Collective Bargaining Agreement, and the sports world was waiting anxiously up until today to see if players would also vote to agree upon the new ten year contract. Because both sides have voted, though, this does not mean that the chaos has died out. The New York Times briefly described the agreement today after the news broke, stating the facts of who what when where & why as well as what will happen to the NFL this week. This is the shortest of the five that I looked through and does not go into detail of how chaotic things will be for teams this weekend when training camps open up AND free agency starts on the same day. To get a view from the other side of the country I took a look at the San Francisco Chronicle, which usually is sports heavy. A little more in depth than the NYT, this article was extremely excited about Football coming back. What readers can experience better than they could with most other news sites is video footage & photos.
Interestingly enough, BBC has posted a story on their site about “American Football”. It was one of the first headlines on their site, which I guess shows how many Americans go to BBC for their news nowadays. Unlike stories about baseball, BBC would have more articles about American Football since there is an annual NFL International Series held in the UK annually. So since there will now be a football season, there will be a game going to London. Chapter 6, Newspapers and the News, says “Newspaper Web sites are particularly good at presenting interactive features on breaking news.” (p. 216) Especially for BBC this is true, since I cannot get a print version of this source. It also relates to the various sources we have in America, since this particular decision was made midday the results from the announcement will not be in print until tomorrow.
USA Today goes more in depth with their information, giving an update & the time something important happened. Also, there is information provided for what exactly was agreed upon in terms of benefits for players and owners. In my opinion, this paper would be fairer to the players and the owners. This happens more in television, but with news a lot of papers (& the companies that own them) will shed a good light on sports owners because they want to have the rights to broadcast those teams on their networks or in their papers. Gannett does not have that much to lose, unlike the New York Times which still has a small share in the Boston Red Sox & would not run stories reprimanding team owners. News outlets like USA Today, BBC News, & the San Francisco Chronicle would not have ant stake in this story and so they can provide more information.
Finally the last source that I had to check out was the New York Post. Out of all the news sources in the world this paper has the greatest stake in sports than any other. Brief history, Rupert Murdoch bought the Dodgers awhile back & beat out ESPN for having an LA sports show. We already know how successful and powerful Murdoch is in the news world, but even after he sold the Dodgers to the McCourt’s he still has a very firm grasp on the sports world. I cannot find if he still has shares in any specific teams, but regardless Murdoch owns FOX Sports, which has an exclusive contract with NFL games & the Super Bowl (as well as other sports, but that would be another few paragraphs). So, the New York Post will not write an article that shows both sides. It will not necessarily make the players look bad, but it will never make the owners look bad (as anyone can see from the pictures & videos) ever since they are a source of revenue for Murdoch & anyone else who makes their millions of FOX Sports.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/american_football/14284718.stm
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/sports/football/NFL-Union-Labor-Deal.html?_r=1&ref=sports
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/07/23/sports/s175529D28.DTL
http://www.nypost.com/p/sports/giants/owners_players_strike_pact_paving_COC3yEkK4yr9EsecP5uD4H
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