In the 19th century, media coverage of sports and of the debates about them (see The Amateur Ideal and Professional Sports) increased considerably for a number of reasons: the rising popularity of sports; the proliferation of leagues and competitions arising from the development of organized sports; and the growth of mass media and the invention of the telegraph, which permitted the rapid transmission of sporting results. Greater attention to sports in the press resulted in separate sports sections in newspapers and the emergence of sports editors, as the biography of Henry John Prescott Wilshere GOOD explains:
“Good had begun work in Toronto in 1872 as a proof-reader for John Ross Robertson*’s Daily Telegraph. By November 1873 he had moved to the Mail, which, since 1 April 1872, had been publishing weekly, well-informed collections of ‘Sporting Intelligence’ on a single page. Despite the growing popularity of sports, most daily newspapers provided only brief notes scattered throughout their pages. The most extensive coverage was obtained in weeklies and monthlies such as the National Police Gazette and Harper’s, both from New York City. Good advanced at the Mail from proof-reader to reporter to night editor (1878), but he was likely responsible for the sports section from an early date, possibly even from its start. At the request of managing editor Thomas Charles Patteson he became the Mail’s full-time sports editor, North America’s first in the estimate of both the Globe and journalist Hector Willoughby Charlesworth*.”
