Episode #49: Lindsay Crouse, Journalist for the NY Times

In this episode, we dig into the story behind the stories as Shanna and Kara interview NY Times journalist Lindsay Crouse. In 2019, Lindsay helped break two of the biggest stories of the year, one with Alysia Montano and Allyson Felix on maternity rights for athletes and the other with Mary Cain on her abuse while training with Alberto Salazar at the Nike Oregon Project. Both stories drove critical conversations and paved the path for change in the areas of #dreammaternity and #fixgirlssports. Interestingly, breaking these stories is not Lindsay's main job at the NY Times, and at least one of these stories took nearly 6 years to tell.

In this episode, Shanna and Kara dig into Lindsay's circuitous journey to live her dream in working for the NY Times, while pursuing a parallel dream to qualify for the Olympic Trials in the marathon. Lindsay talks about her childhood aspirations to attend Harvard even though no one from her town in Rhode Island ever had. She discusses her early running career and how she ultimately earned a spot at Harvard to both run and study for her future in journalism.

The path to the NY Times was far from straightforward, however, as Lindsay moved to New York City and had several other jobs before landing her NY Times opportunity. Even then, she had to rely on her own entrepreneurial spirit and instincts to find and tell these important stories, including an initial off-the-record conversation in 2014 with Shanna and Kara on her treatment by Nike during pregnancy.

Finally, Lindsay shares the painstaking and thoughtful work required to verify facts, confirm information from sources, frame the conversation, and ultimately to tell the stories in a way that will resonate with readers in order to provoke much-needed conversations. The work isn't easy, but Lindsay does it well and with integrity. We can't thank her enough for simply giving athletes a platform to tell the truth and to use their voices to drive change in our sport.