On point as always. It's hard for me to criticize RW when I feel they are likely hanging onto solvency by their fingernails. I am a subscriber. I find most of their content irritating, but continue to subscribe nonetheless. As a female runner who experienced harrassment now and then mostly when I was young, I do think it's tremendously important to be able to walk down the street (or run) without being bothered. But I also think the emphasis on women being harrassed, assaulted, etc., leads to a perception that running, especially solo or at night, is not safe for women. But in fact, the number of women murdered while running is vanishingly small, and I'm guessing assaults are proportionate. I find the whole business of marketing fear to women and discouraging us from doing whatever highly irritating.
A good way for pundits to assure themselves extra blowback is to suggest that the risk of a hot-button "bad actor" of some sort is overstated, especially a hazard that targets -- via intent or biology or both -- a specific slice of the population. Even when you have the data to back it up, this is basically an invitation for an online clubbing.
COVID-19 preferentially strikes the elderly. Sexual assault, outside of the prison system, is almost entirely a women's (or non-man's) issue. Random Internet slights can have devastating consequences on runners under 35 of all sexes and elite educational backgrounds. I bet you knew none of this!
If someone notes that commonly cited campus rape statistics are probably falsely high, he or she will be pilloried as anti-woman (or pro-rape, whatever) -- - not just by Twitter mobs, but within academic circles. Even if the angle is "Hey, good news! Sexual assault might be less common than we* think," it's still a losing tactic.
This is intentional; there are obviously good editorial reasons for publishing articles about how people can protect their health, kids, crotches, bank accounts, etc., and good business reasons for infusing these with scary bullshit and sorta-bullshit. It's a bigger piece of the pie for the publishing entity, but the public mostly loses.
The same phenomenon is a big reason a dispiriting number of people in heavily left-leaning towns like mine remain convinced that someone running past you five or ten feet away can infect you with the coronavid-19, because they get their info from sources that, aiming to stoke fear, bury the information about these speculative claims pertaining entirely to indoor situations. This is "AIDS from a toilet seat" all over again, except this time it's coming mostly from liberals instead of Jerry Falwell's cross-waving inbred loons. Sorry, that was mean, and failed to include a trigger warning.
I would like to see RW remain a viable magazine. I haven't gotten to it yet on the blog, but there is still a good chunk of topical information in there. But if places like RW, Outside and Women's Running fail to determine that it *is possible* to promote social justice without lying about people in the running community, lying about basic science (putting "biological sex" in scare quotes doesn't vanish the concept!) and promoting random bullhorn-people with "You're with us 100% or you're the enemy" stances, I dunno.
(Notice that when you open the door a crack, I kick it down and start decorating the living room to my liking with furniture that may or may not cohere.)
Insert "and few others" after "connaisseurs," and the logic of the compliment is preserved. ;o)
I would enjoy writing instead about Nerf basketball played in the lofts of old New England farmhouses on the verge of collapse. I would approach this task with the same lack of concern for both sentences longer than this one and the egos of my de facto colleagues as I do here. Alas, that market seems saturated at the moment.
I do not mean or intend to get into a steady correspondence but I can't resist mentioning the way some mediocre writers get published even when the market is saturated ... connection, connection, connection.
OK, but in closing, I'll say that you raise a good point.
Concerning journalism specifically, it's a field more and more people from higher social classes are entering, because it's almost impossible to support yourself as an up-and-comer out of college in that field unless you have money coming in from somewhere else -- especially if you want to live in New York, as many of these bozos do.
This alone might not be terrible (well, it would be, but that's for another day), but the current crop is antithetical to the entire profession. They are into speech-policing, rage-stoking, and working out their personal insecurities in frantic op-ed columns that aren't even suitable for a blog, much less a major daily.
This describes to a tee some of the figures in running I have mentioned in this space and will return to, along with others whose sins have yet to be unfurled. They've spend their feeble careers to date pushing agendas exclusive to well-off white women, and now expect their outrage to be credible -- even when packaged with brazen lies. If anything, I have been to kind to them to date.
Other than that, I have no idea what you're talking about!
On point as always. It's hard for me to criticize RW when I feel they are likely hanging onto solvency by their fingernails. I am a subscriber. I find most of their content irritating, but continue to subscribe nonetheless. As a female runner who experienced harrassment now and then mostly when I was young, I do think it's tremendously important to be able to walk down the street (or run) without being bothered. But I also think the emphasis on women being harrassed, assaulted, etc., leads to a perception that running, especially solo or at night, is not safe for women. But in fact, the number of women murdered while running is vanishingly small, and I'm guessing assaults are proportionate. I find the whole business of marketing fear to women and discouraging us from doing whatever highly irritating.
A good way for pundits to assure themselves extra blowback is to suggest that the risk of a hot-button "bad actor" of some sort is overstated, especially a hazard that targets -- via intent or biology or both -- a specific slice of the population. Even when you have the data to back it up, this is basically an invitation for an online clubbing.
COVID-19 preferentially strikes the elderly. Sexual assault, outside of the prison system, is almost entirely a women's (or non-man's) issue. Random Internet slights can have devastating consequences on runners under 35 of all sexes and elite educational backgrounds. I bet you knew none of this!
If someone notes that commonly cited campus rape statistics are probably falsely high, he or she will be pilloried as anti-woman (or pro-rape, whatever) -- - not just by Twitter mobs, but within academic circles. Even if the angle is "Hey, good news! Sexual assault might be less common than we* think," it's still a losing tactic.
This is intentional; there are obviously good editorial reasons for publishing articles about how people can protect their health, kids, crotches, bank accounts, etc., and good business reasons for infusing these with scary bullshit and sorta-bullshit. It's a bigger piece of the pie for the publishing entity, but the public mostly loses.
The same phenomenon is a big reason a dispiriting number of people in heavily left-leaning towns like mine remain convinced that someone running past you five or ten feet away can infect you with the coronavid-19, because they get their info from sources that, aiming to stoke fear, bury the information about these speculative claims pertaining entirely to indoor situations. This is "AIDS from a toilet seat" all over again, except this time it's coming mostly from liberals instead of Jerry Falwell's cross-waving inbred loons. Sorry, that was mean, and failed to include a trigger warning.
I would like to see RW remain a viable magazine. I haven't gotten to it yet on the blog, but there is still a good chunk of topical information in there. But if places like RW, Outside and Women's Running fail to determine that it *is possible* to promote social justice without lying about people in the running community, lying about basic science (putting "biological sex" in scare quotes doesn't vanish the concept!) and promoting random bullhorn-people with "You're with us 100% or you're the enemy" stances, I dunno.
(Notice that when you open the door a crack, I kick it down and start decorating the living room to my liking with furniture that may or may not cohere.)
Kevin, Your writing is appreciated by connaisseurs (let me use the French word) in the running field. Other fields do not know what they are missing.
Insert "and few others" after "connaisseurs," and the logic of the compliment is preserved. ;o)
I would enjoy writing instead about Nerf basketball played in the lofts of old New England farmhouses on the verge of collapse. I would approach this task with the same lack of concern for both sentences longer than this one and the egos of my de facto colleagues as I do here. Alas, that market seems saturated at the moment.
I do not mean or intend to get into a steady correspondence but I can't resist mentioning the way some mediocre writers get published even when the market is saturated ... connection, connection, connection.
OK, but in closing, I'll say that you raise a good point.
Concerning journalism specifically, it's a field more and more people from higher social classes are entering, because it's almost impossible to support yourself as an up-and-comer out of college in that field unless you have money coming in from somewhere else -- especially if you want to live in New York, as many of these bozos do.
This alone might not be terrible (well, it would be, but that's for another day), but the current crop is antithetical to the entire profession. They are into speech-policing, rage-stoking, and working out their personal insecurities in frantic op-ed columns that aren't even suitable for a blog, much less a major daily.
This describes to a tee some of the figures in running I have mentioned in this space and will return to, along with others whose sins have yet to be unfurled. They've spend their feeble careers to date pushing agendas exclusive to well-off white women, and now expect their outrage to be credible -- even when packaged with brazen lies. If anything, I have been to kind to them to date.
Other than that, I have no idea what you're talking about!