SportsBusiness Journal is required reading in many of our sport management courses at George Washington University. My colleague Lisa Delpy Neirotti and I use it to prompt class discussion of current events and in many other ways.
In a graduate sport media and communication course that I teach, there’s an SBJ Front Page assignment. Students are put in the role of editors and given the challenge of remaking SBJ’s front page. Their assignment is to point out a story that landed on the front page and another that was buried on an inside page and to argue why the positions should be switched. They do this, often persuasively, in a memo and in a class discussion that they lead.
In other words, the assignment each class is to say to SBJ Executive Editor Abe Madkour: “You got it wrong.”
The point of this assignment is to sharpen students’ understanding of what news is and, importantly, what it isn’t. It seems to work. By the end of the semester, students are more attuned to the timeliness and relevance of the articles they are reading. And grudgingly, they come to the conclusion that SBJ’s editors are usually right.
Mark Hyman
Washington, D.C.
Hyman is an assistant teaching professor of management in the Sport Management Program at George Washington University. Follow him on Twitter @gwsportsprof.
