homerism (1955)

[Benjamin Zimmer]

HDAS lists "homer" = "an official whose decisions consistently favor the
home team" from 1888.  In more recent years, "homer" more often refers to
a sportswriter or commentator whose coverage consistently favors the home
team.  Such hometown bias is called "homerism", as in this exchange on
CNN's "Reliable Sources" between host Howard Kurtz and Washington Post
sportswriter Tony Kornheiser, discussing coverage of the Washington
Nationals:

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http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0504/17/rs.01.html
KURTZ: Now the local media has gone crazy over this. There's the
Washington Post, front page, "Baseball Capital," sports section, "A
Triumphant Return." Television all over it. Are we seeing a little bit of
homerism in the D.C. media?
KORNHEISER: Sure. Sure.
KURTZ: Is that OK?
KORNHEISER: It's been -- yes, it's been 34 years since there was a team in
the nation's capital. The crime is that it wasn't here for this long. And
there is boosterism and homerism, and I think we can live with it for the
first week or so.
-----

OED has "boosterism" from 1926, but "homerism" has yet to enter any of the
major dictionaries.  Here's a 1955 cite:

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1955 _Lethbridge Herald_ (Alberta) 28 Sep. 6/2 Jim Brooke of the Edmonton
Journal recently went into great detail discussing homerism among writers
and radiomen covering Canadian football. Brooke defines a homer as one
who, when referring to the home team, as we or us, hollers unabashedly for
the hometown team, and heckles the officials with a dastardly will and a
way. ... The Babbler also maintains that homerism has its splinter groups
who deviate from the main theme of homeristic orthodoxy.
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The next earliest cites that I see on the databases come from various
Washington Post sportswriters beginning in 1980.


--Ben Zimmer