An open letter to the Guardian

An open letter to the Guardian{mosimage}With the Olympic Winter Games approaching, Ski Racing would like to remind our friends in the publishing industry about the rules of journalistic fair play.

While we are avid fans of the Guardian, and its sports page in particular, we were disappointed by that paper’s recent unauthorized borrowing of material from our Web site, www.skiracing.com. We are happy to share quotes and information, but only when we are cited explicitly, as the Guardian’s Oct. 4 story failed to do.

Material for our Oct. 2 piece was obtained at great cost to our editorial staff. We flew a busy correspondent overseas for an exclusive interview with the world’s top skier, and made an expensive international phone call to the International Ski Federation’s secretary general’s office in Switzerland.

While these may not seem like big expenses to a high-revenue, well-connected newspaper like the Guardian, we assure you they are significant for our Colorado-based publication.

More important, however, is the fact that in assembling this story our writer drew on the credibility our publication has established through nearly four decades of fair and accurate coverage of the sport. It is this credibility that makes our sources comfortable being candid with us about a subject as sensitive as performance-enhancing drug use in sport. And it is this kind of material that makes our magazine indispensable to our readership.

Readers everywhere deserve that newspapers follow the most scrupulous standards and methods. The online news marketplace is competitive (surely our London friends will recognize this) and our readers and advertisers must feel confident that they are supporting a unique brand of reporting that they can’t get from any other source.

This is especially true during an Olympic season, when our niche sport suddenly becomes relevant to a much wider audience. At such a time, it is crucial that www.skiracing.com distinguish itself as the No. 1 source of thoughtful and unique ski racing coverage.

For that reason, we ask our brethren in the publishing industry to please cite us explicitly when using exclusive material from our Web site and magazine. Under these conditions, we are especially happy to share with a news source as esteemed as the Guardian.

-The editors, Ski Racing magazine