When Merber was still with Citius they had a podcast episode in which they- Mac, Merber, and Chavez said explicitly that Citius was not a journalistic outfit. And that they were a media platform with the intent to cover/amplify running/t&f AND make Citius into a financial viable company.
I listened to that podcast. But I don't know why it was necessary to listen to that podcast. When Centrowitz is analyst for the first Grand Slam meet then is quickly replaced by Chavez, that's a minor hint that there's a connection far beyond a journalistic outfit covering the meet.
The swimming equivalent would be Rowdy Gaines or Elizabeth Beisel benched for a ProSwim meet and suddenly the founder of SwimSwam is doing televised commentary. There would have been reaction galore in the swimming world. What is the relationship? Instead the Chavez role was greeted here with barely a peep.
Then months later there's outrage when Citius is revealed as more than a reporting outfit. Too many commenters here are fixated on every little development during a distance race but whiff the big picture stuff elsewhere.
I'm a fan of Citius, but I understand the criticism: if they were paid to cover GST by GST, they probably should have said so in every article and livestream. I was aware because I heard the podcast episode where they announced that their partnership, but it's totally valid to say that this isn't enough.
That being said, I'm curious how you people want Citius to cover track and field. Sure - they're overly positive and overhype things and rarely criticize or ask challenging questions. But aren't they covering a sport? This isn't government work or education or the enconomy. I don't need "hard-hitting journalism" most of the time. I watch sports to be entertained. Hearing Eric Jenkins rant about Gudaf Tsegay's pacing strategy is wildly entertaining. It's nice to have another outlet with a different audience than LRC that lets people know what races are upcoming, how to watch them, and what could be exciting about them
Personally I am flabbergasted at the amount of people that I guess expected Citius Mag to inherently know that GST was going to be fraudsters all along? I mean what the hell? Of course they're going to agree to take money from GST to promote it etc. they have a large following. I'm seriously absolutely blown away by how seemingly 70% of letsrun doesn't understand how business transactions work or how Citius generates money at all. My god.
I'm a fan of Citius, but I understand the criticism: if they were paid to cover GST by GST, they probably should have said so in every article and livestream. I was aware because I heard the podcast episode where they announced that their partnership, but it's totally valid to say that this isn't enough.
That being said, I'm curious how you people want Citius to cover track and field. Sure - they're overly positive and overhype things and rarely criticize or ask challenging questions. But aren't they covering a sport? This isn't government work or education or the enconomy. I don't need "hard-hitting journalism" most of the time. I watch sports to be entertained. Hearing Eric Jenkins rant about Gudaf Tsegay's pacing strategy is wildly entertaining. It's nice to have another outlet with a different audience than LRC that lets people know what races are upcoming, how to watch them, and what could be exciting about them
Personally I am flabbergasted at the amount of people that I guess expected Citius Mag to inherently know that GST was going to be fraudsters all along? I mean what the hell? Of course they're going to agree to take money from GST to promote it etc. they have a large following. I'm seriously absolutely blown away by how seemingly 70% of letsrun doesn't understand how business transactions work or how Citius generates money at all. My god.
Johnson probably award the contract to Citius and Michael took the first half of the payment as the bribe and then stiffed the back payment that was lured as the carrot. Chavez got the stick and got caught in the unethical at best and illegal at worst.
That being said, I'm curious how you people want Citius to cover track and field
Very simply. Ethically.
I just listened to their podcast where they spent much of the opening 30 minutes talking about the bankruptcy and their debt. It was EMBARRASSING. They still don't get it. I think I'm going to have to write a column. I've always liked Kyle and Chris as people but they have made a mistake here and won't apologize for it or admit it. What's scary is they seemingly don't even understand why so many people are outraged.
On the podcast today, their excuse seemed to be that in 2023 they made it clear they weren't big J journalists - they were little j. So that just means they aren't doing investigative reporting - they are trying to make stars and the sport more popular and are sort of like PR hypemen/social media influencers. As if that's a get out of jail card. So what. Lines are blurred all the time in the year 2025. All the time I say sometimes I'm a journalist, sometimes I'm a fan.
NONE OF THAT MATTERS. Even if you are a social media influencer or simply a celebrity, there are still ethical guidelines and FTC requirements. If you are getting paid to do something (or even anything of monetary value), you must disclose it. End of story. No one knew they were getting paid - let alone $275k.
The fact that they said there was a "partnership" in 2024 doesn't mean payment. And even if they said payment in 2024, they'd still need to say it every time they talked about GST this year. And in every post.
And the fact that they were paid shows you how poorly GST was run and out of their league the GST management was. And Chavez inadvertently admitted it without apparently even realizing it.
He said on the podcast today one reason they were excited to do partner with GST as they'd get access to highlights to the races which normally you don't get. CORRECT. You know why you don't normally get rights to highlights ? It's simple because highlight go to the media outlets that pay for the rights.
In this case, GST was paying for Citius and giving them access to the highlights. What a joke. MJ was in way over his head.
Am I and other media people way more upset than most of you? Damn right. Because we paying thousands of dollars to travel and cover these meets and trying to do a better job of it than someone who is being paid and granted insider access without disclosing it. If I'd known I was trying to compete with such a rigged setup, I might have just skipped the meet and watched it fail - like I predicted - from afar.
Repeat after me. DISCLOSURE is everything. And the word never came up one time in 30 minutes of the podcast.
I'm a fan of Citius, but I understand the criticism: if they were paid to cover GST by GST, they probably should have said so in every article and livestream. I was aware because I heard the podcast episode where they announced that their partnership, but it's totally valid to say that this isn't enough.
That being said, I'm curious how you people want Citius to cover track and field. Sure - they're overly positive and overhype things and rarely criticize or ask challenging questions. But aren't they covering a sport? This isn't government work or education or the enconomy. I don't need "hard-hitting journalism" most of the time. I watch sports to be entertained. Hearing Eric Jenkins rant about Gudaf Tsegay's pacing strategy is wildly entertaining. It's nice to have another outlet with a different audience than LRC that lets people know what races are upcoming, how to watch them, and what could be exciting about them
Personally I am flabbergasted at the amount of people that I guess expected Citius Mag to inherently know that GST was going to be fraudsters all along? I mean what the hell? Of course they're going to agree to take money from GST to promote it etc. they have a large following. I'm seriously absolutely blown away by how seemingly 70% of letsrun doesn't understand how business transactions work or how Citius generates money at all. My god.
So it's okay to "understand" that Congress "insider trade" and defense contractors offer "bribes" to the decision makers that allocate the taxpayer funds? My god!
That being said, I'm curious how you people want Citius to cover track and field
Very simply. Ethically.
I just listened to their podcast where they spent much of the opening 30 minutes talking about the bankruptcy and their debt. It was EMBARRASSING. They still don't get it. I think I'm going to have to write a column. I've always liked Kyle and Chris as people but they have made a mistake here and won't apologize for it or admit it. What's scary is they seemingly don't even understand why so many people are outraged.
On the podcast today, their excuse seemed to be that in 2023 they made it clear they weren't big J journalists - they were little j. So that just means they aren't doing investigative reporting - they are trying to make stars and the sport more popular and are sort of like PR hypemen/social media influencers. As if that's a get out of jail card. So what. Lines are blurred all the time in the year 2025. All the time I say sometimes I'm a journalist, sometimes I'm a fan.
NONE OF THAT MATTERS. Even if you are a social media influencer or simply a celebrity, there are still ethical guidelines and FTC requirements. If you are getting paid to do something (or even anything of monetary value), you must disclose it. End of story. No one knew they were getting paid - let alone $275k.
The fact that they said there was a "partnership" in 2024 doesn't mean payment. And even if they said payment in 2024, they'd still need to say it every time they talked about GST this year. And in every post.
And the fact that they were paid shows you how poorly GST was run and out of their league the GST management was. And Chavez inadvertently admitted it without apparently even realizing it.
He said on the podcast today one reason they were excited to do partner with GST as they'd get access to highlights to the races which normally you don't get. CORRECT. You know why you don't normally get rights to highlights ? It's simple because highlight go to the media outlets that pay for the rights.
In this case, GST was paying for Citius and giving them access to the highlights. What a joke. MJ was in way over his head.
Am I and other media people way more upset than most of you? Damn right. Because we paying thousands of dollars to travel and cover these meets and trying to do a better job of it than someone who is being paid and granted insider access without disclosing it. If I'd known I was trying to compete with such a rigged setup, I might have just skipped the meet and watched it fail - like I predicted - from afar.
Repeat after me. DISCLOSURE is everything. And the word never came up one time in 30 minutes of the podcast.
/Rant over.
But they weren't paid so they got the stick, not the carrot assuming Johnson scammed the initial payment as a bribe which was likely at that inflated figure.
I haven’t listened to any Citius pods or read any of their newsletters in probably a year or more. I don’t have a dog in this fight or know anyone associated with Citius. I absolutely don’t understand anyone who follows running/t&f thinking Citius is a journalistic outfit. Whether that is here or on the various social media platforms.
When Merber was still with Citius they had a podcast episode in which they- Mac, Merber, and Chavez said explicitly that Citius was not a journalistic outfit. And that they were a media platform with the intent to cover/amplify running/t&f AND make Citius into a financial viable company.
They had large crews at the last several world championships and it was ‘brought to you by apparel company X’. Who do you think was covering those bills for Citius to be there?
This is not me passing judgement on whatever the Citius/GST arrangement is/was, I’ll let others do that, but if you are going to pass judgment at least do it from the correct perspective. Citius and Chavez are content creators in our current age of social media. They are looking to get paid.
Unless you listen to those podcasts they’re posed as a news outlet. All they needed to do was put AD on the posts cause it’s ad not a serious review.
At the end of the day, there’s nothing wrong with Citius Mag being content creators - it’s a perfectly legitimate business. There are lots of those in the world. I might raise my eyebrows at how much the market is willing to pay those people, but that just is what it is.
The issue with the whole GST and Citius thing isn’t that there was a contract, but that the ongoing disclosure of that relationship clearly fell below ethical practices. I think it raises questions about what other organizations are paying Citius for coverage, as it’s clear GST isn’t the only one. Citius should be disclosing that on an ongoing basis (I.e., if their New Balance Nationals coverage is sponsored by NB, then each post should say that). It’s not good enough to just say say “well we should have known” as that isn’t the standard in the regulations. If Citius want to be content creators, then they should play by the rules of that game.
This is exactly it. It’s really going over peoples’ heads.
It isn't a bad look. You guys are just looking for any and everything to get mad at in regards to GST. They had to hire someone for a promotion. citius mag followed running events and promoted runners. Simple.
Would you guys have all of this scrutiny for athlos if the billionaire investor just backed out?
It does cost hundreds and or thousands of dollars to cover events from a journalistic perspective. You know intending to adhere to true journalistic standards, while a fanboy magazine calls itself "small j" journalism and gets paid to do so.
They are not journalism of any level whatsoever, once you agree to be paid to play and NOT disclose it at any time. Ethics. Ethics go out the window.
I recall seeing a video of a fangirl in a media zone absolutely gushing over an athlete. It was gross. I demanded that she have her media credentials removed. I wondered how she got any creds at all. Turns out she was a Citius Magazine fangirl working a gig.
You have no requirements to do proper research, quote appropriately or credit or cite appropriately as soon as you become a groupy. And that is all that Citius is. Groupy journalism with a big G.
Michael Johnson must be a complete idiot.
Yes, Citius can't be blamed for taking money, but disclosure is indeed everything.
Here is the fart in the crowded closet: Citius did NOTHING to help GST because NO one showed to watch.
This post was edited 2 minutes after it was posted.
That being said, I'm curious how you people want Citius to cover track and field
Very simply. Ethically.
I just listened to their podcast where they spent much of the opening 30 minutes talking about the bankruptcy and their debt. It was EMBARRASSING. They still don't get it. I think I'm going to have to write a column. I've always liked Kyle and Chris as people but they have made a mistake here and won't apologize for it or admit it. What's scary is they seemingly don't even understand why so many people are outraged.
On the podcast today, their excuse seemed to be that in 2023 they made it clear they weren't big J journalists - they were little j. So that just means they aren't doing investigative reporting - they are trying to make stars and the sport more popular and are sort of like PR hypemen/social media influencers. As if that's a get out of jail card. So what. Lines are blurred all the time in the year 2025. All the time I say sometimes I'm a journalist, sometimes I'm a fan.
NONE OF THAT MATTERS. Even if you are a social media influencer or simply a celebrity, there are still ethical guidelines and FTC requirements. If you are getting paid to do something (or even anything of monetary value), you must disclose it. End of story. No one knew they were getting paid - let alone $275k.
The fact that they said there was a "partnership" in 2024 doesn't mean payment. And even if they said payment in 2024, they'd still need to say it every time they talked about GST this year. And in every post.
And the fact that they were paid shows you how poorly GST was run and out of their league the GST management was. And Chavez inadvertently admitted it without apparently even realizing it.
He said on the podcast today one reason they were excited to do partner with GST as they'd get access to highlights to the races which normally you don't get. CORRECT. You know why you don't normally get rights to highlights ? It's simple because highlight go to the media outlets that pay for the rights.
In this case, GST was paying for Citius and giving them access to the highlights. What a joke. MJ was in way over his head.
Am I and other media people way more upset than most of you? Damn right. Because we paying thousands of dollars to travel and cover these meets and trying to do a better job of it than someone who is being paid and granted insider access without disclosing it. If I'd known I was trying to compete with such a rigged setup, I might have just skipped the meet and watched it fail - like I predicted - from afar.
Repeat after me. DISCLOSURE is everything. And the word never came up one time in 30 minutes of the podcast.
/Rant over.
All the bad stuff aside, something I love about this kind of running drama is how few degrees of separation there are between me and all these characters. I know I'm not the only one, and I was far from a running superstar.
I've never met the BroJos or Gault, but I know people who know them. There's a good chance Chavez knows who I am too, we met a few times way back.
That being said, I'm curious how you people want Citius to cover track and field
Very simply. Ethically.
I just listened to their podcast where they spent much of the opening 30 minutes talking about the bankruptcy and their debt. It was EMBARRASSING. They still don't get it. I think I'm going to have to write a column. I've always liked Kyle and Chris as people but they have made a mistake here and won't apologize for it or admit it. What's scary is they seemingly don't even understand why so many people are outraged.
On the podcast today, their excuse seemed to be that in 2023 they made it clear they weren't big J journalists - they were little j. So that just means they aren't doing investigative reporting - they are trying to make stars and the sport more popular and are sort of like PR hypemen/social media influencers. As if that's a get out of jail card. So what. Lines are blurred all the time in the year 2025. All the time I say sometimes I'm a journalist, sometimes I'm a fan.
NONE OF THAT MATTERS. Even if you are a social media influencer or simply a celebrity, there are still ethical guidelines and FTC requirements. If you are getting paid to do something (or even anything of monetary value), you must disclose it. End of story. No one knew they were getting paid - let alone $275k.
The fact that they said there was a "partnership" in 2024 doesn't mean payment. And even if they said payment in 2024, they'd still need to say it every time they talked about GST this year. And in every post.
And the fact that they were paid shows you how poorly GST was run and out of their league the GST management was. And Chavez inadvertently admitted it without apparently even realizing it.
He said on the podcast today one reason they were excited to do partner with GST as they'd get access to highlights to the races which normally you don't get. CORRECT. You know why you don't normally get rights to highlights ? It's simple because highlight go to the media outlets that pay for the rights.
In this case, GST was paying for Citius and giving them access to the highlights. What a joke. MJ was in way over his head.
Am I and other media people way more upset than most of you? Damn right. Because we paying thousands of dollars to travel and cover these meets and trying to do a better job of it than someone who is being paid and granted insider access without disclosing it. If I'd known I was trying to compete with such a rigged setup, I might have just skipped the meet and watched it fail - like I predicted - from afar.
Repeat after me. DISCLOSURE is everything. And the word never came up one time in 30 minutes of the podcast.
/Rant over.
If you needed it written in bold letters that citius was getting paid to promote GST, Idek what to tell you man. That was the first thing I understood the first promotional post I saw from them about it. I said "oh this is definitely going to be a flop, they must be getting paid to promote it"
For anyone who might be thinking that the BroJos are just jealous of Chris or Citius, Weldon and I were talking about this same topic years ago in relation to a different situation. I’ve always thought of Citius as just cheerleaders for the sport, no one expected them to engage in investigative journalism, but I still would have guessed they were paying their own way to most events, that they made money off the coverage via ads or subscribers or whatever. I don’t follow them closely so I never paid much attention to their business model. When I saw a huge Citius presence at the first GST meet I assumed the meet had comped all their travel and hotels, which by itself seemed a little shady to me, it wasn’t clear to me as a casual observer that their coverage had been purchased and was not at least somewhat objective.
Am I and other media people way more upset than most of you? Damn right. Because we paying thousands of dollars to travel and cover these meets and trying to do a better job of it than someone who is being paid and granted insider access without disclosing it. If I'd known I was trying to compete with such a rigged setup, I might have just skipped the meet and watched it fail - like I predicted - from afar.
Citius's entire business model is getting paid by brands and/or events directly for coverage. I mostly don't mind this, but agree the lack of disclosure is troubling.
I'm surprised there hasn't been any discussion of, what IMO, I find even more troubling - They seem to sign deals that prevent them from covering rival events. Like they were contracted to cover NXR/NXN by Nike, and oh look, nothing about Brooks nee Footlocker. Or last spring they had a deal to cover NB Outdoor Nationals and again - no posts about any of the rival outdoor meets. I don't really believe in those sorts of coincidences. I'd love to get a clear answer from Chavez/Citius about this
Being able to be bought to not cover a rival meet seems even worse. How does one even disclose that?
This post was edited 43 seconds after it was posted.
That being said, I'm curious how you people want Citius to cover track and field
Very simply. Ethically.
I just listened to their podcast where they spent much of the opening 30 minutes talking about the bankruptcy and their debt. It was EMBARRASSING. They still don't get it. I think I'm going to have to write a column. I've always liked Kyle and Chris as people but they have made a mistake here and won't apologize for it or admit it. What's scary is they seemingly don't even understand why so many people are outraged.
On the podcast today, their excuse seemed to be that in 2023 they made it clear they weren't big J journalists - they were little j. So that just means they aren't doing investigative reporting - they are trying to make stars and the sport more popular and are sort of like PR hypemen/social media influencers. As if that's a get out of jail card. So what. Lines are blurred all the time in the year 2025. All the time I say sometimes I'm a journalist, sometimes I'm a fan.
NONE OF THAT MATTERS. Even if you are a social media influencer or simply a celebrity, there are still ethical guidelines and FTC requirements. If you are getting paid to do something (or even anything of monetary value), you must disclose it. End of story. No one knew they were getting paid - let alone $275k.
The fact that they said there was a "partnership" in 2024 doesn't mean payment. And even if they said payment in 2024, they'd still need to say it every time they talked about GST this year. And in every post.
And the fact that they were paid shows you how poorly GST was run and out of their league the GST management was. And Chavez inadvertently admitted it without apparently even realizing it.
He said on the podcast today one reason they were excited to do partner with GST as they'd get access to highlights to the races which normally you don't get. CORRECT. You know why you don't normally get rights to highlights ? It's simple because highlight go to the media outlets that pay for the rights.
In this case, GST was paying for Citius and giving them access to the highlights. What a joke. MJ was in way over his head.
Am I and other media people way more upset than most of you? Damn right. Because we paying thousands of dollars to travel and cover these meets and trying to do a better job of it than someone who is being paid and granted insider access without disclosing it. If I'd known I was trying to compete with such a rigged setup, I might have just skipped the meet and watched it fail - like I predicted - from afar.
Repeat after me. DISCLOSURE is everything. And the word never came up one time in 30 minutes of the podcast.
/Rant over.
Rare rojo W
I always found Citius and the people who run it thin skinned and pathetic. Why is running media so filled with such talentless people? I'm sorry if that's mean, running media has the numbers but majority of the product is such low quality, the racing videos are bad quality, the commentary is awful, the podcasts, many of them, are unlistenable-it is all so terrible.
Not only that it's filled with such whiners. I've been blocked by Citius for years, probably because I offered light criticism. Nothing was trolling or 'abusive' but if you say anything that is in slight disagreement with them, it's an immediate block. How does a media company block this easily?
My larger point is that if someone had spent any amount of time following/listening to Citius I don’t know how they could come away with anything other than Citius was being paid by Brand X to cover a particular meet. Olipop ads on a podcast aren’t going to cover 10 days in Eugene or Budapest for the crew of people they had at those meets.
It’s pretty annoying to think about insider Citius fanboys getting paid in the mixed zone to ask athlete-fellating questions while the LRC team tries to ask serious ones and get spurned by the athletes. All the meanwhile Citius says “It’s ok, we’re just ‘little J’ journalists” and take their social media money
The clip on the LRC pod this week of Michael Johnson getting so combative with Gault over the “how will this make money?” question made my whole week. That kind of dismissal and lack of answering a question was such a bright red flag, which we all already knew.
The issue with narcissists like MJ (which ironically can be a huge advantage in competitive sport) is that many cannot accurately gauge reality.