The traditional end of the year reviews are a good time to catch up on how well the mainstream golf media is covering women’s golf. This is a living issue but at this time I’m going to stick to a simple (yes, its a bit superficial) comparison of the two biggest online golf magazine sites.
GOLF DIGEST
I’ve been a Golf Digest magazine reader and fan for as long as I can remember but 2014 wasn’t a great year for their coverage of the women’s game. You may recall the controversial Paulina Gretzky cover shoot in May. Perhaps some deliberate policy decisions were taken in the Golf Digest editor’s room around that time because the Golf Digest women’s section seems to be frozen in time with few significant updates since then.
On Twitter this week, Golf Digest stuck with a ‘sex sells’ approach – *sigh*…not a golf club in sight!
This is all very unfortunate because this was an amazing year for women’s golf with Michelle’s US Open, Stacy’s continued great form, and Lydia’s breakout rookie season!
But all is not lost – in terms of women’s golf coverage, David Fay’s excellent ‘Super Six’ article really saved the year for Golf Digest. More of the same in 2015 please.
GOLF.COM
Generally I prefer the way that golf.com reports on women’s golf but really, they are still off the mark. They don’t have a lot of content on the woman’s game but when they do, they normally steer clear of overtly taking the fashion and sex angle.
But it’s still not great as this December feature shows.
Let’s hope this isn’t a trend where golfdigest.com and golf.com race to the bottom of the pile because they can’t manage a modern approach to gender.
Women players and fans deserve better media coverage and as world class athletes playing a professional sport, let’s also hope they get it in 2015.
Things are changing fast – recent reports indicate that last year there was a net 260,000 increase in the number of women golfers compared to a 650,000 net decrease in the number of male players. That’s significant for administrators, sponsors and advertisers, and media operators.
