Weekly Digest: Women’s sports coverage rising, Ukraine restoring access to news in liberated territories

The Athletic, one of the biggest American sports news outlets, will double women’s sports coverage. Axios reports that the publisher’s leadership wants to change the deep-rooted trend of sports news being skewed towards men. 

The plan will be powered by a multiyear partnership with Google, with an initial focus on basketball and football; golf, tennis and hockey might be in the pipeline for the future. According to Axios, the arrangement will include the launch of new podcasts and newsletters. The Athletic is owned by The New York Times Company, and attracting more female readers thanks to the company’s resources is an attractive opportunity for the outlet.

Women’s sports has been on the rise in recent years. While the world’s attention right now is glued to the World Cup in Qatar, which is a men’s football competition, the 2023 Women's World Cup is expected to draw record attention. More broadly, as The Economist reported earlier this year, “interest [in women’s sports] from sponsors, broadcasters and startups is growing” as “some advertisers and sponsors think that women’s sports offer better returns than the expensive, over-subscribed male version.”

Ukrainian news outlets are returning to the newly liberated territories in the south of the country.

Kherson, the only regional capital occupied by Russia earlier this year, was liberated by the Ukrainian army two weeks ago. While retreating, the Russians destroyed communications infrastructure, including the Kherson TV Tower. However, Ukraine is working to restore access to news for people residing in the liberated areas.

This week, Ukraine’s public broadcaster Suspiline resumed radio signal in the city. Ukrainian Radio's signal is now available in Kherson thanks to a mobile radio transmission station”, the company announced. TV signal restoration began shortly after Kherson’s liberation. The first issue of print newspaper Novyi Den’ (The New Day) was delivered to the city with the first restored train ride from Kyiv to Kherson last week, the government reported.

The Associated Press fired its national security reporter who provided information about a missile strike in Poland last week claiming that Russia was behind the attack, citing a senior U.S. intelligence official. Later reporting did not confirm that it was Russia that attacked the Polish village of Przewodów near the border with Ukraine – reports suggest the strike was caused by a Ukrainian air defence missile as Ukraine attempted to strike down a Russian rocket.

As The Washington Post reports, “the initial AP alert, sent to thousands of news outlets around the world, suggested a dire new escalation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine” as Poland is a NATO member, and thus a Russian attack on its territory might have caused a much wider military conflict. James LaPorta, the reporter behind the story, was terminated a few days later. 

At the same time, internal Slack messages obtained by Semafor suggest the incident wasn’t the fault of one reporter, but rather caused by broader miscommunication. “[T]he fact that a story that theoretically could’ve triggered armed conflict between NATO and Russia required less than ten minutes, one anonymous source, and just over a dozen Slack messages for the wire service to publish suggests a systemic editorial failure”, Semafor’s Max Tani argues. (AP says LaPorta was fired for systematic reasons, not over one specific incident).