A Passion for Running

Welcome to the home of Mark aka The Running Blogfather – a 40 year-old dad, husband and marathon runner who's beaten injury and is on the comeback trail!

looks like i lit a fire

passion for running category: running on Friday, March 31 2006

Looks like my post from the other day set a few people off.

Drew and then Duncan proceeded with their own flames – the latter going into quite magnificent detail.

Which got me thinking. Do you suppose some newspapers produce crap like this just to get a reaction out of the blogging community, thereby increasing their visibility on the web?

Far be it from me to have any understanding of the media. I’m just still shaking my head at the ineptness of the article and wondering if, perhaps, it was on purpose?




5 Comments

9630

Comment by Adeel

Friday March 31, 2006 @

I don’t think so. There are manufactured news stories (we have them all the time on campus), but that wasn’t one. That was a feel-good story that attracted some angry, angry men.

9631

Comment by Mark

Friday March 31, 2006 @

I’ll say.

9643

Comment by Duncan

Friday March 31, 2006 @

I think it was the grammatical/technical mistakes, the horrendous sentence structure complete with elementary school similes, and the ‘look at me’ nature of the piece that sent me looking for my flaming quiver. A ‘slow’ runner is relative and far be it from me to wax smug about her times; but she got paid to write that garbage as some sort of ‘professional.’ BTW, I met Drew at Napa, he’s not angry; he’s a really nice guy. I got him on the angry scale.

9652

Comment by Jon in Michigan

Friday March 31, 2006 @

All other things being equal, the simplest explaination is the most likely: they were just stupid.

I used to see articles frequently about divers who died while diving because their “oxygen tanks” ran empty. They are air tanks. Because they are filled with air. Sometimes nitrox, sometimes trimix, but usually air and almost never just pure oxygen, which can be toxic at depth.

Just media ignorance and the reasonable assumption that majority of the public either doesn’t know the difference or doesn’t care if there is one.

Oh, and I get medals for half marathons. Its a damn long race for most short distance runners, and folks like me who are new to the game. :)

9694

Comment by jank

Sunday April 02, 2006 @

I don’t think Jon qualifies as “new” at much… But I’d give him a medal any day.

The “Marathon” gripe is valid, but getting wrapped around the rest is, as you said, likely just a grab for any press.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
A blue box by your comment means you do not have an avatar from www.gravatar.com!

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.