Interesting listening to the Citius Off the Rails podcast this morning.
Leer sure does a great job of insulting and gaslighting her listeners that believed Citius was a news company. Pretty much I guess we’re all stupid, according to Leer, for believing that Citius had journalistic standards.
My posts on this always get taken down, but Rojo does need to get off his high horse about Citius as long as Letsrun has their pathetic partnership with AG1, a product that Rojo literally made fun of on a podcast last year.
I'm aware the AG1 relationship is not the same thing as Citius/GST as it's clearly a paid sponsor of Letsrun, but at the same time Wejo does these ad reads explaining how AG1 is backed by RCTs and blah, blah, blah... just obvious BS that none of them believe. It rubs me the wrong way that Rojo brags about how Letsrun's integrity can't be bought (a quote from their most recent episode) while simultaneously getting a payday to promote a product he (rightly) ridiculed in the past, and would never even consider using.
I'm getting caught up after travelling for a few days.
There is a huge difference between an entity doing an ad read and not disclosing they are being paid to cover something.
Big time sports podcasters like Bill Simmons do ad reads all the time. Now imagine another company was paying Simmons for coverage and he wasn't disclosing it.
Or imagine if Nike just said to LetsRun, "hey we'll put you on a $500,000 retainer. Just give our events a little more coverage. We'll fly you out to high school nationals." And we said nothing.
It has nothing to do with being a big time J journalists or a little j journalist which really means not a journalists. FCC disclosure is required for everyone.
But the brands probably want to work with Citius because they don't disclose it. And I didn't realize also they are not covering rival meets.
But they should not be given credentials at meets if they aren't journalists. They can't have it both ways.
*** I have no idea what you are saying about Rojo ridiculing AG1 but when I do an ad read for them it's pretty clear it's paid advertising. Some products I do ad reads for I personally use or have tested the product. AG1 I had not. I'm pretty sure Rojo's college roommate Chris Lear uses AG1. Not sure if I mentioned that. Rojo may think AG1 is expensive. I have no idea what he said in the past but I know how he thinks. But let's keep this topic about disclosure in general. If you'd like to discuss AG1 feel free to email me
My posts on this always get taken down, but Rojo does need to get off his high horse about Citius as long as Letsrun has their pathetic partnership with AG1, a product that Rojo literally made fun of on a podcast last year.
I'm aware the AG1 relationship is not the same thing as Citius/GST as it's clearly a paid sponsor of Letsrun, but at the same time Wejo does these ad reads explaining how AG1 is backed by RCTs and blah, blah, blah... just obvious BS that none of them believe. It rubs me the wrong way that Rojo brags about how Letsrun's integrity can't be bought (a quote from their most recent episode) while simultaneously getting a payday to promote a product he (rightly) ridiculed in the past, and would never even consider using.
I'm getting caught up after travelling for a few days.
There is a huge difference between an entity doing an ad read and not disclosing they are being paid to cover something.
Big time sports podcasters like Bill Simmons do ad reads all the time. Now imagine another company was paying Simmons for coverage and he wasn't disclosing it.
Or imagine if Nike just said to LetsRun, "hey we'll put you on a $500,000 retainer. Just give our events a little more coverage. We'll fly you out to high school nationals." And we said nothing.
It has nothing to do with being a big time J journalists or a little j journalist which really means not a journalists. FCC disclosure is required for everyone.
But the brands probably want to work with Citius because they don't disclose it. And I didn't realize also they are not covering rival meets.
But they should not be given credentials at meets if they aren't journalists. They can't have it both ways.
*** I have no idea what you are saying about Rojo ridiculing AG1 but when I do an ad read for them it's pretty clear it's paid advertising. Some products I do ad reads for I personally use or have tested the product. AG1 I had not. I'm pretty sure Rojo's college roommate Chris Lear uses AG1. Not sure if I mentioned that. Rojo may think AG1 is expensive. I have no idea what he said in the past but I know how he thinks. But let's keep this topic about disclosure in general. If you'd like to discuss AG1 feel free to email me
They are not learning. After piling on citius for being shady, leavit is on threads talking about products he’s been paid to promote with no disclosure. It’s seeming a throw away post about hoa gps watch not counting dogs or something but it tags the company and admits he’s paid on follow up.
I was reaaaally surprised at what she had to say and glad Erik at least has a brain and understands why people were upset. Then she keeps bringing up we have to put food on the table and get paid for our work…. Ok fine but disclose it. Honestly I have pretty much found their podcast unlistenable lately. They barely talk about track and are so uninformed about everything.
My posts on this always get taken down, but Rojo does need to get off his high horse about Citius as long as Letsrun has their pathetic partnership with AG1, a product that Rojo literally made fun of on a podcast last year.
I'm aware the AG1 relationship is not the same thing as Citius/GST as it's clearly a paid sponsor of Letsrun, but at the same time Wejo does these ad reads explaining how AG1 is backed by RCTs and blah, blah, blah... just obvious BS that none of them believe. It rubs me the wrong way that Rojo brags about how Letsrun's integrity can't be bought (a quote from their most recent episode) while simultaneously getting a payday to promote a product he (rightly) ridiculed in the past, and would never even consider using.
I'm getting caught up after travelling for a few days.
There is a huge difference between an entity doing an ad read and not disclosing they are being paid to cover something.
Big time sports podcasters like Bill Simmons do ad reads all the time. Now imagine another company was paying Simmons for coverage and he wasn't disclosing it.
Or imagine if Nike just said to LetsRun, "hey we'll put you on a $500,000 retainer. Just give our events a little more coverage. We'll fly you out to high school nationals." And we said nothing.
It has nothing to do with being a big time J journalists or a little j journalist which really means not a journalists. FCC disclosure is required for everyone.
But the brands probably want to work with Citius because they don't disclose it. And I didn't realize also they are not covering rival meets.
But they should not be given credentials at meets if they aren't journalists. They can't have it both ways.
*** I have no idea what you are saying about Rojo ridiculing AG1 but when I do an ad read for them it's pretty clear it's paid advertising. Some products I do ad reads for I personally use or have tested the product. AG1 I had not. I'm pretty sure Rojo's college roommate Chris Lear uses AG1. Not sure if I mentioned that. Rojo may think AG1 is expensive. I have no idea what he said in the past but I know how he thinks. But let's keep this topic about disclosure in general. If you'd like to discuss AG1 feel free to email me
Yes, I acknowledged that difference in the post you quoted.
But my point remains that Rojo needs to get off his high horse. He said Letsrun's integrity can't be bought; my argument is that your integrity is easily bought, as evidenced by the silly AG1 ad reads you do every week.
Regarding Rojo ridiculing AG1, on a podcast a while back (that I cannot find) he said he tried the disgusting green drink that is AG1 and couldn't believe people paid what they do for it (or something along those lines). You should ask him about it. It really shouldn't be that hard for Letsrun to find sponsors that they can feel good about from an integrity standpoint; AG1 is not one of those sponsors.
If Bill Simmons went around bragging about the independence of his podcast and how he's beholden to no one while also doing paid ad reads for products he has no confidence in, I would also judge him for it.
This post was edited 2 minutes after it was posted.
Yes, I acknowledged that difference in the post you quoted.
But my point remains that Rojo needs to get off his high horse. He said Letsrun's integrity can't be bought; my argument is that your integrity is easily bought, as evidenced by the silly AG1 ad reads you do every week.
Regarding Rojo ridiculing AG1, on a podcast a while back (that I cannot find) he said he tried the disgusting green drink that is AG1 and couldn't believe people paid what they do for it (or something along those lines). You should ask him about it. It really shouldn't be that hard for Letsrun to find sponsors that they can feel good about from an integrity standpoint; AG1 is not one of those sponsors.
If Bill Simmons went around bragging about the independence of his podcast and how he's beholden to no one while also doing paid ad reads for products he has no confidence in, I would also judge him for it.
1) First I think you are factually mistaken. I asked Rojo and Jon about this. Rojo said he has never tried AG1. Jon's memory is very good and he said he has no memory of it either. We all remember him trashing a carbonated drink which he did not name a couple of times on the podcast. This is not AG1 (which Rojo had never tried and isn't carbonated).
2) I want more advertisers on this podcast, but if we get them you'll know about them. You clearly knew about AG1. Not sure why you keep saying we do the AG1 ad reads weekly as we haven't done them in months, but you knew about them.
The issue isn't when Citius does some ad read for a company it's when a company pays them for coverage and it isn't disclosed. But I think the issue is the companies won't pay as much as soon as everyone realizes it really is advertising disguised as editorial.
If Citius really aren't jouranlists then a) they should not longer be credentialed but b) they still have an obligation to disclose when they are being paid.
I agree with most of the posts here. But one thing to clarify for people...
As much as you think ~$300K is this enormous amount of money for what Citius was doing, this is likely normal (if not on the low end). If you ever worked in the Corporate Finance world, you would understand. The amount of money that flows to consultants is radical. I've seen $500K worth of payments going to "consultants" just to come up with a new naming convention on initiatives, process updates that come back with the same process, PowerPoint decks, etc. If Citius had 10 people doing various social media work over the course of months, this would include their fully burdened costs (salary, benefits, bonus, etc.). Then add on top of that, travel/lodging, supplies, outsourced costs, other discretionary expenses, and various fee's and profit on top. Is it insane? Yes. But that is this world.
1) this isn't corporate finance
2) I'd question what GST got in return as attendance was underwhelming.
3) I've got no problem if Citius wants to be a paid PR company. Then just disclose what they are doing. Or they can produce content for Grand Slam Track's channels.
"Hey , we really want the sport to grow, so Grand Slam Track has hired us to promote their season, we're gong to blow it out, etc."
But you can't pretend your paid coverage is organic.
I really like off the rails, but Aisha’s tone in this podcast was really bad. It was very much “I guess Citius’ audience is stupid”.
If this had all come out, people were mad and they said “hey sorry we didn’t make it more clear we were getting compensated massively and essentially GST’s PR team, we understand this wasn’t communicated effectively, we will make sure to be clear about future paid partnerships etc” Fine, You messed up, GST was a sh*t show. Let’s move on. Some people would, rightfully so, be frustrated with the FCC stuff, but it would blow over with the public.
Instead, Chris says “we thought it was obvious” and they are putting the blame on the audience, which is not going to fly. Personally, I think their favoritism/coverage of some athletes, which has ramped up in the last year, had already started to irritate some people(ex. not mentioning anything about the dissolving of the 2024 mark coogan team because mark is his coach, having Connor Mantz on the podcast 6 times, hyping up Nikki Hiltz for a medal at worlds despite being 4 secs slower than the medalists). So the people that are already annoyed, are now mad and have a more valid reason to rip them.
I actually appreciated that Eric(I find he typically has more nuanced takes on everthing tbh) seemed to understand the criticism and has been the ONLY one on Citius to say “hey maybe we made a mistake” but just as he was getting to that Aisha interrupted him and doubled down. She’s prob pissed she hasn’t been paid, which fair, but she has a full time job. I think Citius is Eric’s only gig.
And just so everyone knows, they did announce Asics is paying them to cover world cross……
Came back to clarify….. CITIUS should definitely be compensating Aisha and Eric for their work at things like GST. They are doing multiple live shows and are content creators for CITIUS. They just need to either find a sponsor that is not directly putting on the meet or disclose who is funding the coverage of each meet so the viewer is aware of biases
The FTC has guidelines. And yes those apply to marketing firms too, in fact those are singled out. Just search for «FTC Native Advertising: A Guide for Businesses» or similar. Honestly their content never appealed to me, but that’s not something I would hold against them as individual. But them taking money on the side and then having the audacity to call their audience idiots - truly clownish.
The FTC has guidelines. And yes those apply to marketing firms too, in fact those are singled out. Just search for «FTC Native Advertising: A Guide for Businesses» or similar. Honestly their content never appealed to me, but that’s not something I would hold against them as individual. But them taking money on the side and then having the audacity to call their audience idiots - truly clownish.
Fast Women's Allison Wade put it very succinctly in her Monday newsletter. Disclosure was required here. Chris Chavez, Aisha Praught Leer, and Mac Fleet can bang on as much as they want about "little j journalism" and the (in their eyes) "obvious" partnership between Citius and GST. All of that is irrelevant. The onus is still on Citius to clearly communicate the financial partnership which they failed to do.
This post was edited 39 seconds after it was posted.
I will try to find the clip again. It was a solo Rojo pod or segment, so not surprising Jon wouldn't remember it.
One thing I'd also like to mention is that it seems like you treat disclosure as a get out of jail free card—i.e. as long as I disclose any financial incentives, I'm free to say anything without consequence (after all, you know I'm being paid to say this!). Well, paid advertising works, so when you shill a crappy product (even after disclosing that you are being paid to shill it) some people will go and buy that product.
I will try to find the clip again. It was a solo Rojo pod or segment, so not surprising Jon wouldn't remember it.
One thing I'd also like to mention is that it seems like you treat disclosure as a get out of jail free card—i.e. as long as I disclose any financial incentives, I'm free to say anything without consequence (after all, you know I'm being paid to say this!). Well, paid advertising works, so when you shill a crappy product (even after disclosing that you are being paid to shill it) some people will go and buy that product.
There are many different types of products and promotions . Some I have a personal relationship with and some I don’t .
I never have claimed to have used AG1 . I have a good friend who has used it and liked it. Rojo hasn’t claimed to have used it either.
I am impressed with how much money they put towards research. The audience can decide if it’s worth it but I don’t have a problem with a reputable company paying me to say talking points about their product. It is clearly an ad.
YOU think is crappy. I have no idea as I haven’t used it. But a friend uses it(chris Lear) and now that I think about it another friend I know his wife used to work for them and they both use it. He also told me he uses their sleep product.
without having used the product my only concern would be whether it’s worth the cost . That is my only thought process when I I was evaluating it . But that’s how I think
There are many different types of products and promotions . Some I have a personal relationship with and some I don’t .
I never have claimed to have used AG1 . I have a good friend who has used it and liked it. Rojo hasn’t claimed to have used it either.
I am impressed with how much money they put towards research. The audience can decide if it’s worth it but I don’t have a problem with a reputable company paying me to say talking points about their product. It is clearly an ad.
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.
I fully agree but it's worth adding that Merber DEFINITELY 100% influenced MJ to pay Citius to promote the league.
Merber is an investor in Citius and would gain financially if Citius increased it's revenue and it's audience.
It is safe to say this decision was more Merber's fault because he was DUMB to think Citius could help GST. MJ was just dumb to believe Merber, (and clearly was financially illiterate).