Eh, he’s basically tri’s biggest “fan” at this point. It’s almost a rite of passage that if your getting BB’s 3 softball question, 12 min interview your a real player in said race.
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Uh, the higher standard would be to report that she had been suspended. That’s the higher standard. But it appears that it wasn’t their test but an IM one. And you’d actually be holding a lower standard by forcing a non-employee who works in the media to not cover something he found out. We’d need to see his contract to know what he has to disclose, but he doesn’t “work” for PTO. Employees have way different responsibilities than contractors.
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You may be correct in all that, and it still be a “bad look”. As I said upthread, Jack being the voice of PTO or whatever he is with T100 becomes more than just a journalist. Whether right or wrong, your then sorta going to be held to a different (higher) standard. So meh whether he’s a employee or contractor, when you start taking roles in the sport like he’s taken, your actions start to represent more than just yourself. You can’t have basically your lead commentator “going at” your own race roster athletes behind the scenes (and it come to light).
Although I find the comment relatively fair, the NFL Network and MLB Network have pretty wide berths on their own editorial control and aren’t exactly mouthpieces of their respective leagues. Triathlon is small, it needs the news to be delivered. I suppose this was news, it would have come out sooner than later.
But IF you don’t want your comms people independent then you have PAY them. But even then, you can look right at ESPN and see what Stephen A Smith and Pat McAfee are doing. In McAfee’s case he just destroyed a college freshman’s life for no reason.
In this case, we have someone who likely doped. As I mentioned in the update thread, she now has competition that she will miss, if there isn’t a hearing within the next two weeks I’m wondering if she’s negotiating a settlement.
The provisional suspension being announced at the very end of February, reading through the International Hearing Panel’s by-laws on this stuff would suggest that we would see some movement on or around May 1st.
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Right but that’s the point. Jack “breaking the news” was only a issue because he basically broke news on an incomplete process. Which then muddies the waters for the athlete, the organization (he gets a paycheck from), and sorta the sport as a whole. So 1000% if this was an completed process, there would have been zero issue with Jack “breaking” the news of an finalized doping decision. No one would have even probaly cared who did or didn’t “'break” that type of news. This was only an issue because it literally was only Jack bringing this to the light that then forced the athlete to confirm it. No one else was going to essentially touch it. But in cases of confirmed failed drug tests, even if Jack is #1 with breaking it, it would have been in all the media so who actually “breaks” it sorta becomes irrelevant. We’d all have run to almost every tri media to get there reaction/take, more than giving kudos to whoever “broke” the news 1st.
And for the most part there’s very few media organizations that give the “breaking news” jobs anything more than “break the news” and then go to someone else for an reaction. SAS or McAfee ain’t breaking anything for ESPN, they have others on the grind who come to them to break the news to then get their reactions.
It’s very rare that the “face” or voice of your organization is the one sorta moonlighting sorta in a way that potentially can put your organization in harms way. But of course I’m kinda wondering which job for Jack is the “side hustle”? I’m guessing commentating for T100 is likely less pay than what he’s making with his “journalist” (pod/coaching) position.
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This is a great point about there being distinct roles:
- news breaker
- opinionist/interviewer/content creator
And it’s really tricky to blend the two. Like I’ve said above on this thread, from now on, I’ll be sticking to being an opionist/interviewer/content creator. I’ve officially retired from the news breaking game. It’s too stressful, brings you WAY too much hate (even if all you do is report the truth and do it for the public interest), especially in a sport as small as triathlon where the die hard fans always err on the side of loving the athlete and being more easily annoyed by the reporter who reports on an athlete they love and doesn’t really gain you anything in terms of career progression/success.
So for me, it’ll just be podcasts where I chat to the pro’s, YouTube videos about triathlon things, instagram used for giving opinions/some light hearted stuff and Patreon for bonus podcast series like Road to Oceanside.
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But I don’t’ think it’s necessarily bad to “break news”. Simply In this case, the news was sorta on an subject that was essentially only 50% completed. And so in your instance with your different positions, that then sorta “muddies the waters” because you represent more than just JK or TTH, you represent something “bigger than you” as they say (even if your only paid as contractor/part time type of wage).
If you broke the news on an actual confirmed/completed doping charge, you’d be applauded 99.99%, and I think you’d have a bunch of other media “breaking the news” as well (so who actual 1st reported it would be almost irrelevant).
Every single tri “media” person would easily give an emergency pod / “breaking news” pod on doping cases, especially a big name like this. They wouldn’t wait to give an opinion until their next regular scheduled release.
That’s not how news breaking works though. A HUGE part of news breaking is about reporting stories that are unknown to the masses or still have lots of things to play out.
For example, go back in time and look at the Lance Armstrong case. There was news broken about LOTS of things there but he had never tested positive, gone through a process, been proven guilty, etc.
Or look at Icarus and the breaking of that story. No full process had happened.
Or go to politics and Trump’s impeachment case. It was reported on far before it had been a fully finished process.
Or any big crime case where a suspect has been taken into custody and their name gets broken sometimes years before the case goes through a full process.
Imogen had returned an A & B positive test for Ligandrol. She had been handed a provisional suspension pending her team providing evidence that warranted it going to arbitration and that was the story at the time and it’s completely fair & reasonable to report on that as a news breaker.
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I was more getting at there is 0% chance you hear of a doping violation (to completetion) or whatever “news” story, and oh well I release once a week, so I’ll wait 5 days to “give my take” when the regularly schedule pod drops. You’ll easily have an emergency pod to give your instant reaction. That was the “breaking news” I was talking about, so if that doesn’t qualify as breaking news, fair enough.
I just don’t think you’ll sit on anything if you become aware of something in the sport and wait til your regularly scheduled release date. So whether that qualifies as breaking news or not, that’s what I was more referring too.
And neither would PTN, neither would lots of triathlon media sources. A finalized doping case is going to be “breaking news” for all you guys.
This dude has a massive ego and spends all day caring what everyone thinks about him. He’s just Lionel’s camera guy who should shut up an stay behind the camera. Take notes from Kenny.
I don’t really do podcasts/content based on the week to week of triathlon, though.
My podcast is all about getting on an athlete, talking about their training, racing & life and then talking about the week to week if it’s applicable to that person.
Potentially going forward I do think I need to look into a podcast format that would be like:
Tuesday - triathlon current affairs podcast where we talk about the week that was in triathlon and what’s happening in the triathlon world.
Wednesday - interview with a pro/coach/big name in the sport about training, racing, life, etc.
And have that be my podcast structure every single week, all year. It would make it much easier to just be an opinion/interview podcast and not have to worry about every “breaking” news via instagram AND means that if you don’t want the news/opinion stuff you can just listen to the interview release and if you don’t want the interview you can just listen to the week that was release. Or if you don’t want either, you can go listen to Triathlon Mockery for some comedy haha.
Right but that wouldn’t mean you couldn’t comment on “breaking news”. Like if your telling me you got news on a Wed night of a confirmed result with a confirmed ban, there is zero chance I see you waiting til Tuesday to “comment” on that subject because that’s the next regularly schedule release.
But again if you truly are going to only go into the “interview” only style pod, cool.
And again how many “breaking news” stories are there in triathlon? We have how many “big name” doping convictions yearly? 1-2 at most? There isn’t really that much “breaking news” after that. Only if an new series was created, so it’s not like we are talking about you having to “break news” all that often. I don’t even know you “personally” but just based on your passion for the sport, zero chance you don’t give your commentary on those types of “emergency pod” type of stories in a breaking news fashion. Kudos to you if you truly can take that step back and relax and just give a take 1 week after it happens.
I’ll just wait and see how things play out, but the main point it, I’ll definitely be staying away from being the one who breaks news!
Makes sense, consider that a “compliment” to your grind/passion, that you can sorta move to the next level type of media personality / career advancement (IE being one of the voices of the T100 series). You play your cards right and in 20 years you can be the BB of triathlon doing 12 min interviews all asking about athlete’s favorite color and talk about feeling good going into a race. 
I previously dealt with this running a media platform covering the professional league and the national team in the US (Rugby is small). I was generally not first, even when finding out first because I was brought up a different way. There were other times I was and stood by the reporting.
But I also had to be an analyst and an interviewer. Because in Rugby in the US there really isn’t a specific path, there are no rugby publications or major editorial sites covering the national team. Every platform is independent. So you get stuck in the jack of all trades piece.
Although Triathlon has a few platforms in the US where people are paid, this is still a tiny sport compared to everything mainstream.
The elephant in the room remains your unexplained absence from the T100 commentary team and if that relates to your reporting on the Imo case as is being suggested by Mark. Are you being investigated ? For what ? Do you expect to be back in the commentary booth for T100 this season?
Explanations certainly would help assess the credibility in the eyes of the T100 of your handling of the case.
Uh, he addressed it. He said he was offered all ten planned races and now we’re at 7? If you don’t want to accept that being a globe trotting commentator is hard on the body, then you can be grasping at straws for the HABS club who have their own crappy history.
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Ya’ll are spewing nonsense outta your ass. Scroll up please.
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