gahuga wrote:
Rojo:
First, "the writer doesn't write the headlines" isn't really true, 100% of the time. I know this because I'm a journalist and I write my own headlines. At previous jobs, I didn't -- just saying, she may or may not have done her own headline.
Second, if you really don't understand why your "just reporting the fact" that "LetsRun will be proven correct" is immature and unprofessional, the mass of posters on here will never, ever be able to help you understand. You led with "I'm totally right!" and only then moved into the fact that Kipchoge wasn't going to get sub-2, as it if were the second-most important bit of info you had to deliver. Gloat first, fact second -- does this help? This is ignoring the fact that your saying "they totally won't break two!" wasn't some bold damn prediction -- I'd bet the majority of people watching didn't think they could do it. I was sure they would fail, and was rooting like hell that EK would prove me wrong. Your stupid tweet made it sound like you were rooting for them to fail just so the entity LetsRun could be proven correct.
For all that LetsRun does for our sport, it has a reputation for smugness and smarminess of this exact kind, and that doesn't help the reaction you get. If you guys had never posted something like that before (or, similarly, awkwardly side-angled a reference to Wejo pacing Paula or finishing fourth at USA's in a non-championship year into an unrelated or barely-related article), you'd probably be forgiven more easily.
Now, to the OP's post -- it's interesting, looking at various sources and seeing how they choose to emphasize what happened. I put "breaking2" into the Google News search. I'll exaggerate the headlines I found for effect here, but the first hit had a headline like "SO CLOSE! Kipchoge runs fastest-ever marathon, just over 2 hours!!!!!" and the second was more like "Lame-ass Nike idiots fail to break 2 hours in their stupid rigged race!!"
I guess if you already hated Nike, you might be unable to resist sneering at them. I have many reasons for disliking Nike, but I think what they put together here was a worthy endeavor, and I enjoyed watching it. Yes, I rolled my eyes at the marketing aspects of the broadcast (such as the clock disappearing when it became clear he wasn't going to break 2, or the announcers trying to suggest that EK, ZT, and LD had "prepared for this run for two years!"), but the endeavor itself was a worthy one, and EK made a very brave attempt. No matter that it didn't come under official record conditions, human achievement was advanced last night/early this morning.