The profile of sport journalism has increased as the scale and media profile of large-scale international sporting events have escalated. This article considers the ways in which sport journalists have responded to such changes. It concentrates upon the nature of sport journalists’ relationships with their sources; their relationship with gatekeepers; and the issue of collusion, between journalists themselves and journalists and their subjects and sources. Drawing upon extensive periods of participation and observation at the Olympic Games, the FIFA (men's) football World Cup, and international football club and national championships and tournaments, and citing in-depth interviews with a senior wires-based journalist, the authors examine the practices of the sport journalism profession. These are also discussed in the light of journalists’ own published accounts, memoirs and reflections, and the wider, limited literature of research into the professional culture of sport journalism. In conclusion, the article argues that traditional legacies of source relations combine with current trends in promotional culture to confirm the collusive dynamic, and in widespread cases to intensify the trivialisation of the subject matter of the sport journalist.
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