Occasionally in the past, LetsRun.com has accepted free accommodations and/or travel for trips to events that we otherwise might not have covered.
I want to open this up to discussion and see whether you all think we should do this in the future.
For example the Camel City indoor meet wants to fly one of us out this year. We did this last year and disclosed it. I asked Jon Gault if he wants to go and he said he doesn't feel comfortable taking the trip but was open to me having the discussion on here.
There are three courses of action and two we could take.
1) Never accept trips from anyone else.
2) Accept trips and disclose them.
3) Accept the trips and not disclose this to our viewers (while this is quite common in Europe and some in the US even do it, we definitely would not do this. Our #1 complaint with some other running sites is they take promotional money to produce content and don't disclose it. That not only is against FTC rules, but violates the trust between the reader and the site. Taking a trip and not disclosing it, isn't too far removed from this).
It is against corporate policy for example at Sports Illustrated to do #2.
We have taken the trips in the past, and always disclosed it. This has happened for meets (one year I went to the Great Edinbrugh XC race in Scotland. I was already in Europe, the race organizers said they would pay for my hotel and the difference it cost me to divert my travel plans)), the IAAF Day in the Life trips (we paid for Steve to fly to Jamaica and Emory to Kenya, once they got there they met up with other journalists and the IAAF paid for everything for the rest of the trip and they got to meet and interview with some of the top athletes in the world), and this past winter when agent Mark Wetmore asked if we wanted to interview some of his top young athletes at a summit in Las Vegas and he had hotel rooms available.
Is this something we should continue to do in the future?
The arguments in favor is we're not going to send someone to Camel City otherwise, we would just cover the meet remotely. Instead with us taking the travel, you all get better coverage. I don't feel like our coverage is compromised in anyway. Plus, if we don't take the trip other groups will take it so you could argue we're at a competitive disadvantage.
The arguments against this is the exchange of money compromises the journalist (even if they wouldn't be paying for the trip themselves otherwise).
My argument against this is journalists get stuff of value all the time. Usually it is in the terms of access, but journalists almost never pay for tickets to an event and aren't considered to be compromised. At the Olympics in London I sat 10 rows up right above the finishline. That seat could have been scalped for thousands of dollars a session. People would laugh if I didn't take it because I didn't pay for it (or even if I disclosed it). So the lines that we draw for pure journalism are arbitrary. The question is where should we draw it for LetsRun?
This could be a case where each of us decides what we're personally comfortable with but I'd like to hear your thoughts if any because ultimately the purpose of these rules is to keep our trust with you.
That trust is important.