Tina Dupuy over at Fishbowl LA has a stunning report on what the Los Angeles media left out of their Los Angeles Marathon coverage on Sunday, apparently after dozens of print and broadcast journalists quietly decided that the only marathon story they should air or publish should focus solely on the good news.
They left out, in doing this, the utter incompetence of LA Marathon organizers, Los Angeles city planners and transportation engineers, and Santa Monica city planners and transportation engineers, in failing to create a logistics plan to help the runners and audience get access to the race and then get back to their cars and buses.
If you do nothing else on the Internet today, check out the photo (Update: the photo is of Cairo, not clarified in initial post) and story over at Fishbowl LA.
The media silence, as Dupuy, a runner, reports, worked like this:
She writes: Since there were no runners who died, the narrative has been about the
personal stories of triumph and not the failings of the organizers.
Hoo boy. She notes that the failings, from the start at Dodger Stadium to the finish on the beach, included:
The race ended and then it became like being in a mall on Christmas
Eve. Then exhausted athletes were directed back up the pier to exit.
There were no shuttles at the end to get runners to their cars. There
were no plans to get traffic moving in Santa Monica with the race.
There was no strategy beyond the finish photos.
Update: As Dupuy explains, she used a photo of Cairo to “be funny.” And it is! But it would be better if L.A. media coughed up the pictures they photographed, but did not publish, showing the chaos on Sunday.
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