Can anyone explain why Kara disclosed what her sponsors paid her?

This is a very interesting point. My view comes from 40 years in business and being a fan. NDA's are becoming harder and harder to enforce. (along with non competes that aren't even legal in states like CA) I've felt for years that if runners got together and challenged all the companies keeping their deals secret they would win. Its basically collusion which they would argue its not becasue its done by each individual company without consulting the others. For instance in my state years ago I could tell my employees they couldn't discuss their wages with each other especially in front of customers. Now that's illegal. Its considered anti union.

Just imagine if we really had absolutely no idea what footballers made and you were the number one pick. If they told you they were going to pay you a million a year you'd probably be delighted.

I was recently talking to someone (not in the USA). Their athlete had just signed a deal for 5 years at 20k a year. They are around 20 or 21. So this covers the most likely highest 5 years of their career. Obviously, there are bonuses which I don't have any idea about. But they have run sub 3.33 for 1500. To me that seemed like a very low amount to be locked in for the next 5 years.

Interestingly, Kara lives in Colorado where there have been a few changes to the law under Polis. For instance, its now no longer legal to ask an employee what they made in previous jobs or employment. You also have to advertise any positions you want to hire for in house first with salary paid. I'm sure the shoe companies can get around this. (they aren't employees etc).

I have- I don't believe it clarifies a lot, though. Honestly, there is a lot of stuff that goes on with pro athletes that the public don't know about. At the end of the day, her salary doesn't effect most of us. I can say that the bonuses she described were very high, but the cuts were just as substantial. The book she wrote had an interesting outlook, but overall some areas seem slightly fabricated or exaggerated. But to each their own.

You've answered your own question in the first sentence of your description.

There's a reason why shoe companies have confidentiality agreements; it makes it much easier for them to shortchange desperate athletes. If you don't know what others are getting, you'll be grateful when they throw you scraps.

I'm not a big fan of Goucher, but I give her props for revealing this. I wish more athletes would do so.

"How dare you not give me everything I want for free? It's not like you're a business or anything. It's not like you need to charge a fee so that you can pay your employees, so that they may pay their bills and feed their children. No, you should behave like a charity, and give me everything free of charge, because I've become so accustomed to receiving everything without having to give a damn thing in return. Whaaaaaaaa!"

Before the internet all newspapers and magazines required payment/subscriptions. Stop crying about it.

To the two above:

There are other ways these organizations make money.

I don’t mind paying, and I pay A LOT to be a fan of the sport that I have been a part of and have loved for 44 years.

There are times; however, (such as FloTrack), where I have to just flat-out STOP paying because of an inferior product.

There are other organizations that are doing things differently. Such as Sound Running, where I pay to view a particular competition and they’re completely transparent about 50% of my money going directly to the prize money and into the athletes’ pockets. Sign me up for that everyday!

Runner’s World? 40 years ago, 30 years ago, even 20 years ago it was great. It was how we as fans kept up on what our favorite distance athletes were doing around the world. I remember the issue about Carlos Lopez when he broke the marathon world record by 54 seconds and being the first man to run under 2:08. It was amazing. I looked forward to every issue in my mailbox. Now? It’s ads, ads, ads. Oh, and don’t forget about the multiple pages of hocking the products that are made by the companies that pay for ads. No thanks, not interested.

Now, oddly enough, when they DO have content that I want to read, such as the article about Goucher, I’m tempted to pay. But then again, I am all the time. And I just don’t. Because; if I were to, I’d be shelling out so much money that I’d be wondering at the end of the month “Where’d all my money go?” Oh, and then the next month I’d be shocked because everything is auto-pay and I just paid another month for something I’m not using, over and over and over again.

Just the other day I was doing some research on an athlete that just transitioned to the Masters age group. In that research, I came across MULTIPLE sources that I’d have to pay for to get old information about performances from years ago: Runner’s World, Running Times, Track & Field News, New York Times, etc. I’d have to start a subscription for ALL of those to even access one article that I was actually looking for. Just the subscription to Track & Field News alone would have cost me over $100 for a year (paid upfront for the whole year). I chose to find alternative sources and just went a different way with the information I was putting together.

Enough is enough for me.

YOU choose what YOU want to do, I’m cool with that. Didn’t even have to resort to belittling you.

TL:DR

Stop crying because a publication has a paywall.

Came in this thread to stay Kara Goucher is a gangster and Nike sucks even though they seem to be the ONLY paying gig in town for athletes. We love monopolies in this country.

How dare a company seek to make money off its work and pay its employees.

Attention, more money than I ever made

Okay, I've read your initial complaint here, and I've read your subsequent attempts to defend this position. And I'm confused about what exactly it is that you think should happen. You're pissed off because there are too many services offering running-related content that you'd like to consume, and you don't want to pay for all of them? Is that kind of like being pissed off that there are too many great car companies these days, and you can't afford to buy all the cars you want?

This thread started because of a Runner's World article that you couldn't access. For the print subscription and unlimited website access, RW currently costs ~$4 a month. If you think RW is crap, don't pay it. If there are articles like this one that interest you (and despite all the complaining, RW still does some impressive long-form coverage of the elite side of the sport), then pay it.

If you don't think it's worth paying for, how do you think RW should pay its staff and publication costs? Maybe they could get more ads, but (a) the ad market has been decimated by the rise of digital search, so ads are no longer as lucrative, and (b) you don't like ads either. As you complained: "It’s ads, ads, ads. Oh, and don’t forget about the multiple pages of hocking the products that are made by the companies that pay for ads. No thanks, not interested."

Okay, you don't want to pay, and you don't like ads either. I guess it's checkmate.

how do you think writers get paid? Why should you get content for free?

The short answer is to p!ss off incels.

It’s worked 😏

Yeah, crazy that journalism should cost money when I can just get all of my news off of TikTok and the Gram.

You could read them for free in libraries or from a friend who had an issue you wanted to read.

The majority of paywalls can be avoided by disabling Java for the site. This definitely works for the New York Times. I'm not sure about Runners World. For publications for which this doesn't work but offer free articles, you can clear the cookies. But I use the Java trick for numerous sites.

Before the internet, magazines were not free. If you wanted one, you bought it with real money.

Then the Internet came along and for a short, sweet period of time, if it was digital, it was free. Because the thing you were getting wasn't "real" (there were no printing presses or delivery trucks, or paper copy), the digital version was free. Obviously that era is 20 years ago (or more!).

But for some reason, people still think that if it is digital, it costs the owner nothing to make and therefore should be free. This is even more true for music, movies, and TV shows.

What I do have a problem with is that we don't have more a la carte options. If I wanted to read one article in RW about Bob Kennedy, I could buy just that magazine. I didn't have to get a subscription, but nowadays it is very hard to buy just one race (I'd pay $.89?) or one track meet ($5?). Instead I have to create another account and set up a monthly thing. This is the part that outrages me... I'd buy more "track" if I had a la carte options.

p.s. I think that in hindsight, Coucher's contribution to our sport is a massive net positive. If you found her annoying, that doesn't really matter in the long run. Your (or my) feelings aren't really that important in the big picture. Coucher, much more than other athletes, is helping to drag women's running in America into the post-Salazar era.

Seriously? What do you do for a living? Are you a dentist? Will you give me a free root canal? I don't wanna pay. GTFOH with that attitude.