Race: what the Mary Cain NYT article is really about

Ok. Hands up; don't shoot. But obtusely you're agreeing with what I'm saying: that a motivation for the NYT coverage is about selling news and ad space aimed at it's readers, not about race. Same thing with your example about a tennis player. Tennis make up the same demographic the NYT is trying to reach with the story on Ms.Cain.

I knew about Gallagher's coach and certainly that casts a cloud over her pro career but there's nothing there like the lock-tight sure proof of doping that the two East Germans had in their doping program.

The fact is that there just aren't that many white athletes who get much media attention, because there aren't too many star white athletes in the major sports. And the media cover the sprints, dominated by black athletes, far, far more than the distances. Even Jeremy Wariner, a long sprinter with many gold medals, barely got any coverage. So, as much as I hate to agree with the Brojos on an issue of race, I just don't think there is any reason to see coverage of Cain as racist.

Ajee who? Is that her nickname or something? "ajee"?

The Mary Cain article was the #6 most emailed article in the last 7 days.

An inconvenient truth: NY Times editors are pretty smart. They know Cain either ends up on the podium or is the next cautionary tale for other helicopter parents. They don't particularly care or even really know what they are talking about when they scratch the surface of all the most debated topics...her form, going pro, why she couldn't get along with a beloved coach that mints Ivy runners. In fact, the only news was her meanderings about pooping the sheets this season. It's a great story no matter how it ends and they keep piling on.

rojo wrote:

1) it's called the "New York" Times. Ajee is from Philly.

Pretty useless point. The NYT is a national/international newspaper, not a county newsletter. Take a peek. They sometimes cover people from places as far away as Philadelphia. Washington, even! LA!

agip wrote:

I can sympathize - I feel I know MC - she is of pretty much exactly the social class I am from - she could be the daughter of any one of my colleagues.

Ajee...not so much.

"Not so much," he says.

Your apparent inability to develop an interest in anything that doesn't look white and middle class is sad.

And I am as white and middle class as they come.

disgusting wrote:

agip wrote:

I can sympathize - I feel I know MC - she is of pretty much exactly the social class I am from - she could be the daughter of any one of my colleagues.

Ajee...not so much.

"Not so much," he says.

Your apparent inability to develop an interest in anything that doesn't look white and middle class is sad.

And I am as white and middle class as they come.

yer probably somewhat correct in your criticism of me. but to be fair, I didn't say I was UNinterested in Ajee...I'm just more interested in MC, partly because she looks like me, partly because she is a distance runner, partly because I really like her personality, partly because at her best she runs with more joy than I see in Ajee. Mostly, she seems like a really smart nerd with high athletic ability, and that is a very interesting type to me since I (and a lot of distance runners) straddle those two worlds.

On the other side, I'm not at all interested in many white American athletes. centro just ticks me off. Deena Kastor never did anything for me. I'll root for coburn but to be honest if she retired it wouldn't mean much to me.

The New York Times magazine is a general interest publication. It's not a niche publication dedicated to running, or even Sports Illustrated, with an intense focus on personalities in athletics. Most of you are approaching this from far too insular of a perspective.

I'm guessing this idea for the Cain story came in as a freelance pitch. It was appealing because there are some layers to the story, points of tension. Young wunderkind taken under the wing of former superstar who's trying to ensure she doesn't make the same mistakes he did.

What the New York Times magazine does not do is run stories about the next great champion unless there's some extra narrative tension to the story, a larger theme.

The editors didn't sit around the table and say, well, what about doing a story on Ajee Wilson because

1) No one pitched it

2) They never heard of Ajee Wilson

Now it may be the case that there's an interesting story to be written about Ajee that could be a fit for the New York Times. But someone would have to do some reporting to uncover what that story might be, beyond just the fact that Ajee is an Olympic hopeful.

Well it is true that Bronxville is about three times as far from Times Square as Neptune, NJ.

Ergo the NYT has never heard of Ajee.

Bingo! The story author Elizabeth Weil is a "contributor" to the NYT Sunday magazine covering outdoorsy stuff and she has written all of 3 stories over the past year! (one on a round the world hiker, the other on snowboarder Shaun White). So this was a freelance pitch. Where do writers like this come up with their ideas for pitches? By reading other publications (Outside, Runners World, Lets Run SKI Magazine) and the newswires for story ideas that get lots of online "hits" that they can (rip off), excuse me, customize, to SELL to the NYT Sunday editors. Ergo, then, the need to make them appealing to its Sunday audience. I liked the story. Thought it was well done, but was troubled by the overt sexual overtones: "Her legs, stacked with muscles yet wrapped in a silky sheath of youthful skin, are spectacular." (just kidding)

alanson wrote:

Well it is true that Bronxville is about three times as far from Times Square as Neptune, NJ.

Ergo the NYT has never heard of Ajee.

Proximity is irrelevant.

The staff of the Times magazine is pretty small.

There about 12 editors who have some say in pitches, who edit stories, etc.

See here:

The new editor, Jake Silverstein, was the former editor of Texas Monthly who just relocated to New York. This is his first time living on the East Coast.

Odds that any of the editors know who Ajee Wilson is: Very slim.

Maybe one of them is a big sports fan, I don't know. But when you're the editor at a generalist publication, there is a lot out there you don't know, because your beat is so large. You rely on your freelancers to bring in pitches that you can't from your desk.

I'm just trying to provide some perspective on how these decisions get made.