The article focuses on the periodization in the history of the Russian sport journalism and covers its evolution from the beginning of the 19th century until now. The article emphasizes the key stages that are the result of cooperation of the core drivers: mass media development and the role of sports in the country life. On the one hand, sports journalism as part of the mass media directly depends on the general factors that are political, social, economic, or technological in nature. On the other hand, sports journalism depends on the goals set by the government and society and regarded as priorities in the sport sphere. For these reasons, the key criteria of the periodization are: social and political aspects of cooperation between the society and the government in the sports sphere reflected by the media; the functions of the sports journalism; qualitative and quantitative characteristics of the sports journalism; tech- nological characteristics and conceptual priorities of problem-themed complex of the sports journalism during one or another period. Traditionally it is admitted to divide three the most extensive and obvious steps in the development of the Russian journalism: prerevolutionary, soviet, and modern. However, if we take into account only these periods, we just outline the main periods rather than reveal the main tendencies and qualities in the development of the Russian sports journalism. The more advanced and detailed periodization gives the possibility to show the general and particular character of the events, to divide extensive periods into thevariety of certain questions overviewed in the chronological order, to form a whole picture of the historical process taking into account both subjective and objective factors.Keywords: sports journalism, specialized mass media, physical training, sports, history.