Lance Armstrong shows why the disruption in journalism matters

Even if you don’t follow professional cycling, you’ve probably heard about the almost epic fall-from-grace experienced by former Tour de France superstar Lance Armstrong, who was shown to have boosted his performance with illicit drugs and has since had all of his previous awards removed. Was it an investigative report from a sports magazine or a high-profile mainstream journalistic outlet that finally brought this sports super-hero down? No.

As New York Times media writer David Carr points out in a perceptive post, amateur or “citizen” journalists using Twitter and little-known cycling blogs as their platform were the ones who were the most responsible for bringing the story to light. In the wake of the decision by cycle-racing authorities to strip Armstrong of his awards and ban him from the sport, a number of outlets that were devoted to covering the cyclist admitted that they had been suspicious of Armstrong and his performance for years, but weren’t able to prove that he had been “doping” and therefore weren’t able to write about it. As Carr notes in his post, apart from a few standouts who questioned Armstrong’s performance publicly, “for the most part, the journalists who seemed to know the most about professional cycling told us the least.” Why did this continue for so long? One likely reason was that the Armstrong story was so incredibly inspirational — an athlete who fights back after cancer and not only becomes healthy again but becomes a world champion. But there were other reasons as well, including the fact that media outlets focusing on the sport were reluctant to poison the well, since Armstrong was such an amazing story.