When it comes to sports and media and gender issues, Mary Jo Kane is among the nation's most outspoken critics of the sexualized imaging of women athletes -- what was Venus Williams wearing!?!? -- and a dogged chronicler of scant coverage of women's athletics on sports pages and TV channels.

A University of Minnesota professor and director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sports, Kane is the author of such page-turning journal articles as "Sexual stories as resistance narratives in women's sports: Reconceptualizing identity performance" and "Expanding the boundaries of sport media research: Using critical theory to explore consumer responses to representations of women's sports."

So, who'da thunk that the good professor would be asked inside the macho ESPN tent?

Kane has joined an advisory panel that will guide the ESPN behemoth on its future coverage of women's sports and women athletes. In fact, ESPN is in the process of launching a new business and digital platform called espnW . . . which stands for ESPN women.

Continue Reading...

I have watched from afar — and with lots of bemusement — the recent dust-up over the alleged number of supposed felons who may have registered and perhaps voted on Nov. 4, 2008, in Minnesota’s U.S. Senate race.

After all, my life has been immersed in the Al Franken-Norm Coleman recount for nearly two years — first, covering all of the twists and turns of the recount for MinnPost, and then writing my book, "This Is Not Florida: How Al Franken Won the Minnesota Senate Recount." It’s now completed and will be released in a few months. Had I the chance, I would have made this current controversy a tiny footnote in my conclusions.

One point I make in the book is that various panels of judges and even former Sen. Coleman’s lawyer in court said there was no widespread fraud in the election.

Continue Reading...