Where Are the Journalists?

One of the panels I went to at TrailCon was titled ‘Balancing Art and Journalism in Creative Storytelling’. It was a good panel overall and I don’t want to call out the panelists, Nick Danielson, Somer Kreisman, Sean Haworth and Aisha McAdams (all photographers) or the moderator Hilary Yang in any ways here, but want to take this as a moment to ask the bigger question for our sport: “Where are the actual journalists?”

What I mean here and the panel somewhat skirted around the issue but never fully addressed it, is that trail running doesn’t have reporters, journalists, and investigators. I saw and chatted with the folks from Outside, Like the Wind, Trailhead Media – the podcasters were busy in their Airbnb’s interviewing athletes. If every shoot is an assignment, if every articles is pre-sold and cleared with the brand partners, and if every published story is an advertorial, then we don’t have journalists we only have an extended contract marketing department. We have hype men and cheerleaders. Maybe I’m naive and sports journalism doesn’t require a bullet proof wall between the fourth estate and the ad department but the much loved on and worried over “culture of trail running” would greatly benefit we’d have some folks actually asking some challenging questions from the big players – the businesses making the big money in our sport – and not just sitting there like puppy dogs waiting for the newest shoe release, or shirt with holes in it.

It can’t be that the only ‘truth tellers’ in our sport are the meme accounts on Instagram, come on.