More To Locker-Room Stories Than Meets The Eye

HEY, wait a minute. Time out. What is this flap over women sports reporters in locker rooms really all about?

Is it about equality? That argument should be over. Women won the legal right to compete equally with the guys on the sports beats more than a dozen years ago. And by the long-standing traditions of sports journalism, equality means following athletes into the locker room for post-game interviews.

Well, then, maybe it's about privacy. Does an athlete have the right to shower and dress without being badgered by reporters who want to know how it felt to miss what would have been the game-winning field goal? That seems reasonable.

But there's more going on in last week's messy little stories from the locker rooms of two professional football teams than equality and privacy.

In Boston, the story was about sexual harassment. There, five naked players surrounded a female reporter who was seated on a stool interviewing another player. With lewd remarks and their unclothed presence, they created a scene despicable not for its nakedness in mixed company but for its meanness and use of sex as a tool of intimidation.

In Seattle, the story was a simpler version of sexism. Here the coach of the Cincinnati Bengals barred a female reporter from the locker room after the Seahawks upset the Bengals on Monday night television.

The coach's action smacked of the old-fashioned, immature brand of sexism, the tree-house mentality of a pack of boys retreating to their sanctuary and throwing up the no-girls-allowed sign.

Plenty of players and coaches - and probably more than a few male sports reporters - yearn for the good old days when sports reporters were all guys who clambered right into the tree house behind the team. It was a nice cozy arrangement. Too cozy.

Cathy Henkel is sports editor of The Seattle Times and the only female sports editor at a major metropolitan newspaper in the U.S.

When she was a sports reporter, she disliked the locker-room aspect of her job. In fact, she said last week, at first she didn't agree with such access for any reporters, men or women.

``You can't imagine what it's like to go in there,'' she said, recalling the first assignment that took her inside the locker room of a college football team. ``Eventually you become desensitized,'' she said.

Distasteful as it was, she soon realized the only way to compete as a journalist was to have the same access as her male colleagues. ``So you do what you have to do.''

But is hanging around a smelly locker room, talking with sweaty, often immature and ill-behaved athletes as they go about the business of undressing and showering, what any sports reporter - male or female - should have to do? Absolutely not.

It's time to call a halt to this cozy tradition of sports reporters interviewing nude or semi-nude sources. Not because it's too difficult for women, but because it's an unprofessional, inappropriate and unnecessary way for sports journalists to go about their job.

Yes, I know, this is a sports journalism tradition. But, like so many traditions - men-only Rotary clubs, separate, less convenient golf-tee times for women, to name just a few - it's a tradition institutionalized by men.

The last few decades have been all about women in growing numbers learning to get along in what were once men's worlds - medicine, law, executive suites, corporate board rooms. Sometimes we adopt the traditions and play by the (men's) rules, but often we change them; slowly, over time creating a new environment, a new awareness.

That's already happening in some corners of the sports world.

The wise folks who run NCAA women's basketball have figured out how to deal with the locker-room issue. They open it to reporters for 20 minutes after a game. Athletes keep their clothes on while reporters go about their business of asking questions. When time is up, reporters clear out and the players get on with showers and changing clothes.

Quite simply, the real issue is not locker-room access for opposite-sex reporters. It's quick access to athletes by all reporters. Redefine the issue and you raise the standards of sports journalism.

There are other ways to provide post-game access to athletes. When facilities are available, players and reporters can gather for interviews somewhere other than the locker room. That doesn't mean the stilted press conference format disliked by reporters. It can be an informal arrangement that allows the same opportunity for quick beat-the-deadline quotes from key players that are the staples of locker-room interviews.

Female sports reporters should step back from this issue, declare victory on the right to equal access to the locker room and begin the tougher fight. The fight to change the rules of the game.

Together with their enlightened male colleagues (those who have learned the lessons of the last few decades), women sports journalists can create a new tradition, a higher standard that fulfills the reporter's need for quick access to sources without compromising anyone's equality or privacy.

Mindy Cameron's column appears Sunday on The Times' editorial page.