News Release

(To mark twin 50^th anniversaries in 2017, as a fulltime running journalist and as a marathoner, I am posting a piece for each of those years. This one comes from 1996.)

JOURNALISM AND journaling share little more than their first eight letters. Journalism is a job, the gathering and writing of news about the feats and failings of athletes other than himself or herself. A journal is personal, a record of its writer’s own opinions and observations.

I’ve worked as a journalist since 1960. But even earlier I’d become a journal-keeper. Over the years my published writings have increasingly become more journal-like than journalistic.

In early 1996, I announced that my Running Commentary newsletter was dropping all hard news about this sport at its highest levels. It would become even more a personal letter to readers like myself.

One reason was that the internet was exploding. The daily web supplement to Runner’s World and the emailed Race Results Weekly were reporting more news, much sooner than I could in my little once-a-month publication. Yet I was doing more journaling that ever and wanted to make more room for it in the four printed pages.

Another reason for backing away from reporting on bigtime running in the Commentary was that it had little to do with the world where I and most of my regular readers ran. I still enjoyed reading about the stars, but also realized that many runners didn’t. They found this news oddly disturbing.

At my most impressionable age I devoured Track & Field News, Long Distance Log and anything else published about the sport. My young teammates didn’t share this passion.

Instead they chose not to read these magazines that I tried to press upon them. The news of better runners depressed them, as if it diminished their own efforts.

My buddies didn’t understand the true nature of news stories. I knew from growing up in a family of journalists and studying to become one myself.

Journalists-to-be learn a truism of this business in their first course: If dog bites man, that’s not worth reporting. But if man bites dog, that’s news.

Normal people and events aren’t newsworthy; only the oddities are. News tells of the exceptions, not the rules. The more unusual the story, the bigger it is.

Witness OJ’s trial or Oprah’s marathon. Sports lend themselves to this type of reporting, because standouts are so easy to see and dote upon.

Sports reports worship their winners... and spread the notion that only one athlete or team can win any event... and give the impression that to win anything you must win everything – the Super Bowl, the Final Four, the Olympic gold. Sports news suggests to recreational athletes that we must think, and train, and compete like those who make the headlines.

But they’re not like us. This is their job. They play for pay and plan their day around this work, while we try to squeeze our sport around the edges of the workday.

They also chose their parents well. They have the size and skill, speed and stamina to compete with the best athletes in their sport, while we lack the gifts to win anything more than a local award when only three people show up in our age-group.

Big-race winners are freaks, the one-in-thousands athletes who stand above almost everyone else who runs. Reading about them can be intimidating. You can feel pangs of inferiority on learning about athletes who train more in a day that you do all week, or go two miles for each one of yours when they race.

The cure for intimidation isn’t to stop reading. It’s knowing how to read. Realize that these people have been written up because they are exceptional.

Admire the “news freaks.” Take inspiration from them. But don’t let their uncommon efforts insult your common ones.

Take pride in your training, knowing that mega-mileage runners can’t log one of your miles for you. Celebrate your racing, knowing that record-setting runners can’t break any of your PRs.

Once you start thinking this way, the news stops disturbing you. The “freaks” of running can only lift you up, never put you down.

Photo: David Monti provided more hard news faster in his Race Results Weekly than I ever could in Running Commentary.

[Many books of mine, old and recent, are now available in two different formats: in print and as ebooks from Amazon.com. The titles: Going Far, Home Runs, Joe’s Team, Learning to Walk, Long Run Solution, Long Slow Distance, Miles to Go, Pacesetters, Run Right Now, Run Right Now Training Log, See How We Run, and Starting Lines, plus Rich Englehart’s book about me, Slow Joe.]