Association for Women in Sports Media
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Despite the 1978 federal court ruling in Melissa Ludtke and Time, Inc., Plaintiffs, v. Bowie Kuhn, Commissioner of Baseball, 461 U.S. F. Supp. 86 (1978) granting equal access to female reporters to players and coaches in the locker room throughout the 1980s female reporters still found it hard to gain equal access. Some teams even went so far as to ban all reporters to keep women out. The Association for Women in Sports Media (AWSM) was founded by a group of female sportswriters as a support network to to combat that discrimination.
AWSM is an international organization of hundreds of sports writing, editors, broadcasters, producers, PR personnel, and sports information directors. AWSM seeks to provide a fair and positive image of women in sports media, offer networking and visibility, mentor young women entering into sports media, and to promote equal opportunities in the workplace.
In 1988 then Washington Post sports writer Christine Brennan was elected as the AWSM's first president. Vicki Michaelis, USA Today's Lead Olympic Reporter is the current President.
Each Spring the ASWM holds an annual convention. Its first convention was in 1988 in Oakland, CA. The 2007 convention was in Dallas, TX
