Tampa Bay Content Analysis Paper

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In a state known for sports, from high school to professional, Tampa Bay is a city that lives and breathes sports. Teams like the Rays (MLB), Buccaneers (NFL), and the Lightning (NHL) are all competing for the hearts an attention of the citizens of Tampa and beyond. In order to win this competition, teams need media exposure. The purpose of this paper is to perform a content analysis of the Tampa Bay Times by looking at the frequency and content of the sport media coverage of the professional sports teams in Tampa Bay from January 29, 2018 to February 16, 2018.
What is content analysis? According to Ungvarsky (2016), content analysis is taking media and evaluating what it says and how it says it. In this case, the media is the Tampa Bay …show more content…

This season, the Buccaneers missed the playoffs with a record below .500. In the Tampa Bay Times, the Bucs were the least covered professional sports team that is located in the city of Tampa. The Buccaneers had only 16 total headlining articles during the time period in which the data was collected. Of those 16 articles, there were 10 opinion pieces. Five of these were negative, four were neutral, and one was positive. Most of the negative articles were aimed at the Buccaneers defense. A headline that read “The Bucs Pass Rush was so Bad, Dirk Koetter Sacked his Friend,” talked about how Dirk Koetter had to fire defensive line coach Jay Hayes who Koetter has “Been buddies with for nearly 40 years,” (Stroud, 2018, February 12). The rest of the 16 articles were five news pieces, and one feature about a former player. The feature was covering hall of famer Derrick Brooks who was “Signing autographs for any fans making a donation of $10 or more to his charity,” (Auman, 2018, February …show more content…

Despite the fact that the time period was after the season ended, the numbers for the Bucs were very low. Not to mention that the majority of opinion pieces were negative. Clearly the most effective way to change the frequency and the content of articles written about the Buccaneers would be to win more games. That is easier said than done though. The Buccaneers have already taken steps to appease critics by making staffing changes as noted earlier, but that is only a temporary fix, and if the move doesn’t pan out, it could wind up being worse for the organization’s image. The best way to improve the Buccaneers image and increase coverage would be to engage in community outreach

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