Sports Writing Non-Deadline
Mike Fish, David Milliron / Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Mike Fish	David Milliron

His and hers.

When it comes to high school sports, federal law does not require programs for boys and girls to be like matching bath towels. But the courts have been clear in saying that programs, facilities and equipment for both sexes must be of a comparable quality.

	Dec. 13, 1999

In their eight-day series, "The Gender Gap," [Atlanta Journal-Constitution] Staff Writer Mike Fish and Computer-assisted Reporting Editor David Milliron documented startling facts, for example:

• 75 percent of local salary supplements for coaching goes to support boys sports;
• 86 percent of the dollars from legislative grants went to projects where the primary beneficiaries were boys sports; and
• In 50 years, at least 2,500 persons had served on the executive committee of the Georgia High School Association, and just 5 were women.
• In an interview on the first day of the series, the director of the association stated: "I don't know what the Title IX laws are, since we don't deal with Title IX."

In April 2000, Gov. Roy Barnes signed Georgia's Equity in Sports Act. It is a direct result of the newspaper's series and is intended to force public schools to comply with Title IX.

"The package brought a huge response," Fish said. "Some 300 e-mail messages, phone calls and letters showed up. The newspaper's Internet site received an average of 1,300 hits an hour during the week of publication."