yes. and to anticipate another question, we comp working media.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

You know, when I read the Triathlete piece, I was wondering "was she at the same conference"? I guess we now know the answer.

As the lawyers would say, "judge, it goes to the credibility of the witness" Or, as I tell my 14 year old daughter. "must be present to win."

maybe a little ding on the credibility of someone from the Magazine? I'd say so.

Humm....

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I saw this on a white board in a window box at my daughters middle school...
List of what life owes you:
1. __________
2. __________
3. __________

The Triathlete Magazine's "piece" struck me as if it came directly from political party's PR department.

I would say it begs a more obvious question: what's her (or the magazine's) beef? Is there some history?

Working media. Those 2 words don't usually go together.

It did read like a CNN article on Trump.

 
It did read like a CNN article on Trump.[/quote]
In the 10.5 years I've been around ST, perhaps the funniest line I've ever read. Oh yes, exactly like that.

Meh, not much better than reading a Fox piece about Trump. I thought I worshiped God, not the orange Cheeto.

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----------------------------------
Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

Way back in 2015 I wrote a blog post (remember when blogs were a thing?) about TBI and gave suggestions for improvement. I had three categories in which I thought TBI could improve:

1. Diversity.

1. Bringing the Entire Tribe Together.

1. Getting the Message to the Masses.

Looking back at these three categories in 2018, I think TBI has hit 2 and half out of the three.


With regard to bringing the entire tribe together, TBI has made a concerted effort to include coaches, social media "celebrities" (e.g. Triathlon Taren) and not for profits (in addition to race directors and vendors/retailers) who made up the core of TBI. Just take a look at the 2018 attendees list. Bringing together triathlon stakeholders is like herding cats and TBI has a done a good job with this.


With regard to getting the message to the masses, comments, articles and posts about TBI have flooded my social media feeds over the past week. While I do exist in somewhat of an echo chamber, there is no doubt that TBI and the TBI conference are on the radar of triathletes. The fact that there are posts about TBI on the ST forums and in the Women for Tri Facebook group by people who didn't even attend the conference are further proof that TBI is getting its name and message out there.


Finally, the 800 lb gorilla -- Diversity. First off in the triathlon world diversity is more than gender or race. Diversity includes geographic diversity (for a long time triathlon has been dictated by small groups of people in southern California and Colorado), stakeholder diversity (getting coaches and non-traditional media involved) and socioeconomic diversity (if we want to grow the sport we need to hear from people of all income levels, not just the 1% or 5%). TBI has done a lot on the geographic, stakeholder and socioeconomic diversity front. As far as gender and race are concerned, TBI has attracted more women and POCs to its committees and to the conference itself (again, look at the 2018 attendees list). Is there room to improve, of course. That being said, TBI has come a long way in three years.

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@kburnsgallagher
http://www.somerandomthursday.com

.

No it doesn't. CNN uses facts and they by all evaluations of media are pretty center of the road (see this article and diagram: http://www.allgeneralizationsarefalse.com/...ctly-are-we-reading/)

It reads more like a Fox News article on... well just about anything in which they find info o back up their opinion rather than reporting on information. As you can see from the graph, CNN tips a tiny bit towards the left, but is still in the neutral part of the graph and that makes sense. Fox News is in the hyper partisan section of the graph. I say this because I am not arguing my opinion, I am arguing reality that CNN no matter how much a despot wants to undermine news that doesn't kiss his butt say Fake News, it simply is not true regarding CNN.

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2018 Races: IM Santa Rosa, Vineman Monte Rio, Lake Tahoe 70.3

Dan, I read both articles and found yours to be thoughtful, reflective and factual. Thank you.

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2018 Races: IM Santa Rosa, Vineman Monte Rio, Lake Tahoe 70.3

Please take your political stuff to the right forum, so we can continue to make fun of the magic review of an event that wasn't attended.

Was her article an op-ed or was it written as direct report on the even itself? I couldn't tell.

i don't know. but if you look at her twitter feed it seems to me she made up her mind how the conference was going to be in advance of the conference.

i think if she would have attended the conference she'd have found that her stats were either false or misleading. the awards won, the speakers, the moderators, the planners, the content, was largely influenced or populated by or championed women (from what i saw and from the feedback i've received). in erin's defense, you couldn't have known that without going to the conference.

still, the older i get the bigger my world gets, and the more i see that i just didn't see before. we "older white men", to user erin's term to describe those who put on this conference (tho in fact it's probably 60/40 women who put on this conference), have suffered from narrow viewports. we were literally "thoughtless" on many fronts - well meaning, poor seeing. your world will get bigger if you let it. in most cases, each of our worlds got bigger. i doubt any of us pictured a woman winning the ron smith award when we conceived it, but this year we unanimously agreed that one woman outshone all the men.

but, i still allow for the blind spot i might have, which is why i'm not the judge of this. women and those of color, those of different morphologies, geographies, cultures, economic situations, are best able to determine whether the plans, the atmosphere, the direction was correct or veered from the mark.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

CNN uses facts?! Was that supposed to be in pink?

can we agree on something? whether CNN is walter kronkite or der stürmer is irrelevant in this forum. there is a fine forum, one of the better on the internets, housed right here on slowtwitch's servers, where you all can have that out.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

but why would they have published an article about last year's conference on Feb 1 2018? that seems like very poor editing/planning.

she didn't. she made a number of points that would have been defensible (debatable, but defensible) had she written them about last year's conference. but she wrote them about this conference just concluded...

"This year, the conference’s eighth iteration, was an opportunity for TBI and its board of directors to right the wrongs of the year before. To show the world that they are truly leaders in the sport who maintain that title by keeping closely attuned to triathlon’s pulse, and by championing important, emerging voices. Instead, it was a rehash of years before..."

there was no doubt she was writing about this year's conference:

"A noted high point of this year’s event was Arizona Congresswoman and Ironman Kyrsten Sinema’s speech about public land conservation"

because she didn't attend the conference she was critiquing she didn't see the difference in tone, content and takeaway that other women apparently saw at this conference (based on what i see these women writing). i have no doubt we have plenty of critics of this conference. we just don't have many critics of this conference among those who attended the conference. at least that i've seen.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

How are you coming on your pledge to teach 5 people to swim? My brother-in-law has gone from just dunking his head to something that almost resembles freestyle. Just signed up for his first triathlon in August. So I've only got 14 more to go.

i'm on #3. gloria. hispanic woman i met at the pool. speaks very little english. around 60. don't make any assumptions about who wants to learn to swim!

that said, i just got off a long and informative call with US masters. we're strategizing. big ambitions.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

On the Triathlete mag website, the article is listed under 'News'

Dan,

Has the writer attended the conference in the past?

Jake

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Get outside!

She attended in 2017.

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@kburnsgallagher
http://www.somerandomthursday.com

And what's more, she apparently managed to write her take on the specifics and tenor of what was said there without having listened to any of it herself. So irresponsible and weird.

Thankfully, per Mrs. Beresini, Triathlete mag is pledging to "seek more new voices" that are "reflective of the beautiful spectrum of athletes who compete in the sport". Well, that's great, but I don't care how beautiful or unique the athlete -- if his or her voice is full of unfounded, sweeping blanket assessments and patently misleading hearsay, like the voice in this piece is, I don't want to hear it.

Such a waste of breath.