Posted by Sports fan, a resident of the Duveneck/St. Francis neighborhood, on Nov 19, 2012 at 10:54 am

Hello Palo Alto Weekly/Online...

Consider departing from the ways of old-time journalism that never seem to give women's sports their due, and always put the men first... The women win, the men lose... so why does the losing team get the headline, the top billing, and the longer press coverage?! Puleez... It's not just your publication, but could you consider a progressive change?

Posted by EMS, a resident of another community, on Nov 19, 2012 at 1:24 pm

I love women's sports, but men are generally bigger sports fans than women, and men's sports are generally of more interest to sports fans than are women's sports. Perhaps this is the reason, wouldn't you think? Besides, the women's team has it's own article in the Weekly, describing their #1 ranking.

Posted by Sports Fan, a resident of the Duveneck/St. Francis neighborhood, on Nov 19, 2012 at 5:43 pm

EMS, your argument creates kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy doesn't it? That's what people said about women's interests in sports before the 1970s, when laws were passed to stop the gender discrimination in organizations receiving federal funds (this doesn't include newspapers, obviously)... If the press reports less on women's sports, it stands to reason that people will be less interested...

Posted by Rick Eymer, a resident of another community, on Nov 22, 2012 at 2:07 pm

I appreciate any and all comments. I would like to point a couple of things that may help clarify things.

First, it would be a mistake to judge our men's sports vs. women's sports coverage based on this one article. The men were at home and so were easily accessible. The women were on the road (Hawaii) and thus were not as accessible. We often give the nod to the home team, women or men.

I would like to suggest you take a look at the body of coverage. We wrote a preview of the Stanford women's basketball team before their game with Baylor, headlined their win over Baylor, headlined their No. 1 ranking and followed the tournament win with a headlined story about Mikaela Ruef. That was all within the last week.

Volleyball, soccer and cross country women's teams all got their own headlines within the last week.

I suppose you could provide specific examples of "old-time journalism," but we'd like to think we cover Stanford sports fairly well regardless of gender.

Again, thank you for the comments.