SUNY Oswego hosted the 2022 Dr. Lewis B. O’Donnell Media Summit on Oct. 26 to an audience of students, faculty and alumni in Waterman Theatre. 

Officer in charge Mary Toale opened the event by thanking everyone involved and acknowledging Curtis “Jerry” Gerald Condra, the first faculty advisor of the Media Summit who recently died. 

The theme of this year’s event was “Reaching for the Summit: Underrepresentation in Sports Media,” which Toale said was fitting because it surrounded diversity and it is the 50th anniversary of the signing of Title IX, which prohibits discrimination within public schools and institues of higher education, according to The United States Department of Justice.

“I couldn’t have gone to college without sports,” Toale said. “[But] considerable gains still need to be made.”

The Summit consisted of a panel of SUNY Oswego alumni who spoke directly to the topic and a number of career connectors who met with students after the event and gave advice about entering the workforce. 

Allif Karim, class of 2018, moderated the panel of alumnus Donna Goldsmith, class of 1982, Yaw Ofori-Atta, class of 2005, Ade Ellis, class of 2004 and Morgan Rumpf, class of 2017.

Topics discussed during the panel included diversity in sport media for both athletes and media representatives, mental health and athletics and how sports media covers crime. 

Ofori-Atta said he believes change in representation in sports media is happening “on the surface level,” but it is mostly just talk. In his experience, he said the media is putting in the effort, but change is happening slower than most people hoped. 

“These athletes are expected to be on all the time,” Ofori-Atta said. “As media members we need to be better at remembering athletes are people and we all have bad days.”

Responding to a student question, Ellis agreed with Ofori-Atta and said that as mental health is talked about more, it becomes normalized within athletics and the workplace in general. 

“We forget that [athletes] are humans at the end of the day,” Ellis said. “Just like you’d fix a broken ankle, you need to take time to [heal] your brain.”

Despite these conversations becoming more prevalent, Goldsmith brought up the differences between how women’s and men’s mental health are treated.

“It’s harder for women to express mental health concerns because it will be seen as ‘oh, she’s so emotional,’” Goldsmith said. 

Rumpf continued, saying that in general, women in sports media are held to different expectations compared to their male coworkers. 

“Women who like sports are expected to be the smartest person in the room,” Rumpf said. She continued, saying that women are constantly questioned about their knowledge of the sports they like and can be ridiculed if they cannot answer every question correctly. 

“It’s important for us men to embrace women in sports,” Ellis said. “We are men in communications but we aren’t doing a good job of listening.”

The panelists also covered why women athletes are not equally represented through media, including the broadcast of their games and discussion of their performance.

Goldsmith said one of the hesitations networks have with covering women’s sports is the lack of funding involved. Female athletes, she explained, are offered less scholarships, less media deals and less promotional opportunities and therefore are less likely to be covered because there is less money involved. 

Similarly to female athletes, athletes of color are also underrepresented and misrepresented throughout all media platforms.

Goldsmith, whose career included working for the NBA, WWE and Tough Mudder, said compared when she was in the workforce, diversity is discussed a lot more openly now than in the past because of today’s political climate.

“Diversity is huge right now, especially with what’s going on with Black Lives Matter, the Asian crisis [and] women’s rights,” Goldsmith said. “It’s time to pay more attention, 10 years ago we weren’t paying attention to it … nobody wanted to talk about it.”

One reason for hiring more people of color (POC) representatives within media, Ellis said, is they are able to relate to athletes of color more directly and can more accurately cover their stories because of that. 

“Positivity doesn’t get the headlines,” Ellis said. “It’s all about seeing people that look like you.” 

Ellis pitched and produced “Beyond Limits” for CBS, which according to CBS Sports is, “a series of half-hour specials that highlight trailblazing, diverse athletes in sports where they are under-represented.” 

Moving forward, the panelists agreed that conversations around diversity to continue and need to be more prevalent. 

“I think diversity is a buzzword,” Goldsmith said. “But hopefully it’s a buzzword we’re going to act on; We’ve got to act on it.” 

Along with discussing underrepresentation in sports, the alumni also gave advice to the students. 

Rumpf encouraged students to travel and work in new places and to go there with an open mind. After her graduation, Rumpf moved to Idaho where she gained entirely new perspectives about how people live and interact with each other. This fueled her passion of inclusivity in sports media and gave her the experience to openly discuss diversity in the future. 

“No one tells the story of a community like a person from that community,” Rumpf said. 

She concluded by reminding students that they deserve the opportunities coming towards them and to never let anyone take those away.

“You are in that seat for a reason,” Rumpf said. “You were hired there for a reason … Don’t let anyone talk over you.”

Image via Abigail Connolly