Beyond the Box Scores: Current Issues in Sports Communication 

with Dr. David Burns

Wednesdays from 4 - 5:30 pm
Ocean Pines Community Center
Meets March 14 & 18, April 4, 28 & 25 and May 9
$35 per person

Sport can connect a country and the world in unique ways. Although sport is big business it also has always served as a cultural platform for social change. This course covers today’s social issues through a sports lens. Topics include, NFL players kneeling during the national anthem, pro players and traumatic brain injury, controversial team names and mascots and gambling and fantasy sports, to name a few.

Dr. Burns has worked for CNN and NBC News, in both permanent and freelance capacities, as a videotape editor and field camera operator in the United States and abroad. While living outside the US, he worked as a technology correspondent for the IDG Wire Service and for a Polish business and finance weekly newspaper.  He has taught new media courses to students and professional journalism workshops to media professionals in the United States, Poland, Russia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Afghanistan.

Burns is a past president of the Society of Professional Journalists Maryland Professional Chapter.  His research interests involve the media-politics linkage.  His doctoral dissertation examined the role of the Catholic Church in the development of the Polish media landscape during the transition from communism to capitalism.

He is currently writing and editing a sports communication textbook entitled, You Make the Call: Case Studies in Sport Communication (Routledge) due out in summer 2018.