Beyond Black and White: Media Coverage of Caitlin Clark’s and Angel Reese’s WNBA Rookie Seasons

Researchers used textual analysis to examine news coverage of Caitlin Clark’s and Angel Reese’s rookie seasons in the Women’s National Basketball Association. Researchers examined local reporting from the Indianapolis Star and Chicago Sun-Times—Clark’s and Reese’s respective home-city newspapers—as well as national coverage from ESPN.com. In contrast to earlier studies on sports media representation, race and gender were not central themes in the articles analyzed. Instead, coverage primarily focused on standard sports journalism stories such as game summaries, analysis, and feature profiles. Both Clark and Reese were framed as professional competitors, signaling a shift toward more equitable sports reporting. The study offers two potential explanations for this “normalization” of coverage. First, female athletes—especially Clark and Reese because of their longstanding basketball rivalry—are increasingly visible in team sport coverage, indicating a growing acceptance and popularity of women’s basketball. Second, much of the coverage was authored by female sports journalists, who previous researchers have found write in a different tone, talk to different sources, and frame stories differently than their male counterparts. These findings suggest that both increased visibility of female athletes and diverse newsroom representation may be contributing to a more balanced portrayal of women in sports media.