Discussion: Talking to journalists

A journalist writing for the holiday issue of a trendy Santa Fe NM magazine called me today to ask about orienteering. I was so not prepared. To non-orienteers, what is most interesting about orienteering? I said orienteers are the only people I have ever seen run over broken ground with the grace and speed of elk. I said being able to orient yourself in unfamiliar terrain is a survival skill that helps our children stay safe wherever they go. I said orienteers make awesome navigators on search and rescue teams. I said yes participating in an orienteering meet is a fun birthday party activity (at least for the kids I know).

Can you top that?

Sure. Don't say that orienteering is like Boy Scout land nav on crack.

Elk? Of all the animals at vlad's sprint series finale, I don't remember the elk as being on of them!

someone's been talking to journalists in the Wall Street Journal:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240527487033...

I avoid calling it a "treasure hunt," as that makes people think of geocaching. I focus these days on the adventure aspect, calling it an adventure sport that anyone can enjoy. When people ask about using GPS, I just smile and point to the compass, map and my head and say, "We prefer to use the original GPS equipment."

someone's been talking to journalists in the Wall Street Journal

Oh dear. I try not to use words such as search and find in the context of orienteering. One of the first things I tell beginners, especially if they are SAR volunteers, is that orienteering is not about searching. It is about navigating from point to point.

So, how do you feel when you spot your control?

I say to myself, "Yay, I found it." ;-)

I say I got it. If I got it without wasting time I nailed it. :-)

@Una: the term for hitting a control exactly with no mistakes is a "spike". The opposite is a "boom"

Having orienteering mentioned in the WSJ (again, and in a more extensive fashion than the coverage of Wyatt Riley years ago) is not too shabby. The picture is cringe-worthy, but the text not without merit.

Also, this is positive: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2010/10/21/adventure...

Is OUSA behind any of this (it would be great if that were indeed the case), or is it just a happy coincidence?

The WSJ article was a result of the writer knowing a member of our club who invited him to the event at Moreau last Saturday

We didn't get too much of a chance to talk to the writer (the photographer was more receptive--that's my hand pointing to the map) so I guess he got most of his info from Bruce, a somewhat casual orienteer.

The WSJ article describes wandering around punching every control in sight. Ouch. I like the photos.

I also like this YouTube video, Orienteering for beginners

Una>>What do you like about the photos? The pictures of the map and the compass are nice, but none of them convey the essence of the sport. The photo of the guy kneeling down in the middle of the woods, on the other hand, goes completely against the image of orienteering as a fun, competitive sport and makes it look like "boy scouts for adults."
Having said that, all publicity is good publicity, and at least the map in the photo is an awesome one!

>Having said that, all publicity is good publicity,

I disagree Boris. If people have an 'image' of our sport of it being "boy scouts for adults" (which most probably do) then this publicity just strengthens their perception of the sport. Publicity can be bad. If instead it had that photo of Ross Smith at WOC in 2009 then it might make them take a look at the new USOF web site. This is why it is important for USOF to have a series of photos available for the media to use. I guess another question is whether that set of stock photos on the USOF web site would include a person kneeling or not. Hopefully it wouldn't.

hammer>>On the other hand, if this article hadn't been written at all, then no new people would learn about orienteering, whatever impression they get of it. At least this way, maybe someone will be interested enough to show up to a meet and see what it's like for themselves.

Yes that is probably true. I guess it depends on what your target audience is. We try to be everything to everybody at every event. So this article will attract a specific audience (and may turn off another).

Right, we might turn off the folks looking for OUSAR. ;-)

Only good publicity is good. Bad publicity is lethal. Wrong publicity is even worse. There is nothing worse than creating the wrong idea. That causes the "right" people to stay away and the "wrong" people to show up ... and be disappointed. Pitch orienteering as a treasure hunt and you get people coming who want to wander around searching and do not want to read a map...

The guy kneeling was at least in the woods, not standing in a parking lot or on a road. The compass is an orienteering compass, stripped of many features seen on a "normal" compass and possessing others. That creates interest. A compass with a difference! Why is it like that? How does it work? The map has the usual O map detail, also intriguing.

One FAQ I get from beginners is should they bring their own map? No, we give them one and it is a special one. Can they come back later to try the course again? No, we set the course for today only; they can keep the map and use it too but the control flags will be gone. Is the course the same at every meet? No, we make new courses for every meet.

Una>>"No, we make new courses for every meet."
This is clearly the conventional wisdom and status quo in orienteering as we know it. However, a friend of mine was telling me about something they are successfully trying at his club in the suburbs of Copenhagen to raise attendance. Instead of catering to the regular orienteering crowd, who wants different courses on different maps every single week, they have tried setting the same courses on the same map for several weeks in a row. This establishes more of a feeling of regularity one sees in other youth sports ("soccer practice is at 6pm on thursdays at the local field" replaced with "orienteering training is at 6pm on thursdays at the local forest"), and gets beginners to feel like they are improving by moving on to more advanced courses on the same map week after week until they are hooked enough to start going to other events at other locations. I keep thinking that this might be worth a try, especially near/in a large metropolitan area in the US. I wonder if it would work (the Danish club that tried this doubled its membership in about a year).

When geocaching was started (I was there), the individual who stood to benefit from its growth orchestrated a brilliant leveraging of the media (at little expense to himself). It was featured live on CNN. It even appeared in the print edition of National Geographic Magazine as a sidebar. That's big stuff. Of course it was successful, and geocaching is huge.

It takes a bit of acumen and incentive to get that done. Jeremy of Grounded, Inc, had it. Its what USOF has been lacking since I've been observing it. If you use a haphazard approach (people who know people, for example), you will get haphazard results.

A couple of other points. Geocaching is obviously a "treasure hunting" style of game. The market, media, etc., like this. They even paid me to write a book about something similar. It certainly helps, and it certainly explains why journalists often couch it as such. The fact that the orienteering product differs what people want to sell, and what the market wants to buy, is, well, life. Sometimes it is nice to simply accept reality. That said, I've seem competitive geocaching like games staged ("treasure hunting" on the clock), and it works and people like it. Perhaps a revenue raising opportunity for USOF (especially now that there is talk of USOF fundraisers to address the budget train wreck).

Secondly, in a similar vein, I think the product is more the problem than the publicity. Most everyone I know (hikers, runners, geocachers, letterboxers) already knows about orienteering and understand what it is. They simply prefer their present activity more. Its not that it is a bad product, it is simply less preferred among many recreational outdoorists who know about it. Publicity isn't the problem. Size of the market is. Also, geocaching and letterboxing did grab market from hikers and couch potatoes when they were introduced, so in some sense, a window was lost.

The forgoing is a big part of the reason (among others) I have suggested that focusing on the rec market is a non-starter. But, I understand that's where some people think the bodies are.

All JMHO, of course.

same courses on the same map for several weeks

Great idea and I'd like to discuss it but maybe in another thread?

Here let's focus on (a) what is the right message and (b) how to get it out to more people?

One thing that is not the right message is "anyone can do it" then when complete beginners show up we give them a map and send them out. Sink or swim. Some beginners do fine, but too many others experience hours of frustration and do not come back for more. Either we must not invite "anyone" to our regular meets, or when we do then we must ensure that we teach beginners the basics before they start on a course.

So where are the target markets for orienteering? Boy and Girl scouts? SAR responders? Adventure racers and geocachers who want to up their game?

I am finding it difficult to market orienteering to SAR. A small minority of SAR folks get that orienteering teaches navigation skills that SAR responders need. Far more think a GPS is superior to a map and compass, and some appear to believe using a map and compass instead of a GPS just means you are too cheap to buy good equipment.

Competitive cross country runners generally don't want to do orienteering because they could get hurt.

Competitive cross country runners generally don't want to do orienteering because they could get hurt.

And/or their coaches discourage -- or outright prohibit -- it.

At what age do competitive cross-country runners retire? (This is a bit of a trick question).

When I describe Orienteering I tend to use the words "sport" and "race".

I'm believing more and more that the problem is with what newcomers experience when they turn up at an orienteering event.

They ask for instructions (we are such a welcoming community someone will be happy to tell you how it works). The organisers are busy organising, the competitors want to compete. Someone will help, but who will that be, and how much time do they have?

I would like to see a premium service, $20-50, where someone competent would give brief instructions and run around an orange or green course with small groups of newcomers, explaining to use the map on the run, pointing out hills and re-entrants and whatnot. Get the individuals to do a small amount of navigation themselves. Go over it afterwards.

It would take less than an hour. People would learn more than in three sessions on their own. They might come even come back for the three sessions.

Get two people doing this and have groups going every 30 minutes.

Make money out of the newcomers, watch your club grow, and motivation for advertising will grow. Positive feedback is great.

Actually ndobbs, that reminds me about the first time someone goes to a climbing gym, you have to pay extra to take a course usually. Not a bad idea if done right.

Someone on AP suggested the following ordering of concepts, and I think it works well, for explaining what orienteering is.

1. It's a running race (usually a time-trial). 2. It's in terrain (woods/mountain/whatever). 3. The course is not taped. 4. You have to pass by some controls. 5. You use a really detailed map to navigate.

Then repeat in reverse order. So you use a map to navigate from control to control to complete the course. You have to this in terrain, running as fast as you can, because it is a race.

Get the conceptual framework in place. Have them picturing people running fast in the woods.

Then qualify it to appeal to the listener's tastes. Or the teller's. Important not to make mistakes/get lost. Etc.

O in North America is not too expensive for beginners. But it may well be too cheap.

Publicity isn't the problem. Size of the market is.

I call BS on that one. Most of the people I've introduced to orienteering did not know what it was or had an incorrect perception. Almost every single one really enjoyed themselves their first time out and several have stuck with it on their own. No, orienteering will never be as popular as soccer or golf or zumba, but this is a big country with a large untapped market. Making sure that reporters get it right is important to getting to that untapped market, many of whom are probably turned off just by what they *think* the sport is.

To answer Nev-Monster's question: most XC runners retire at age 18. There are ~440,000 athletes in US high school cross-country. Most of them stop competing after high school because they don't go to college, can't make their college team, or are burned out from racing 2x/wk for 2-4 years.

Outreach to colleges could be a good source of new orienteers. College (and college-age) kids are willing to try new things and like to go on road trips. Even if 1% of HS runners get into orienteering after graduation, that's 1,000 new orienteers/year.

Just today our club received an email from a parent who knew we offered beginner instruction at our events (she read that on our website), but she wanted to know if we provided guides to lead people through the course too.

It seemed ridiculous at first. But it's not that ridiculous the more you think about it, and it's not that different from shadowing by parents or coaches.

Guided map hikes might be a good idea. I did that once at a boy scout training day. Have club members take turns volunteering to lead a guided hike at a set time?

I personally thought that WSJ article was great. It was an engaging, well written, and fairly accurate sounding story about a newcomer's experience at an orienteering event.

If you all have trouble with that article, then your problem is not with the writing, it is with the product that orienteering clubs are providing.

As much as elite orienteers might contest it - the vast majority of orienteering in this country is done by raw begineers who barely understand their maps, who do stop and kneel, who do dash to the first glint of orange in the woods, and who do get dramatically lost. Until orienteering clubs find a better way of introducing people to the sport, the newpaper articles that describe this beginner experiance are accurate. And the elite orienteers will remain limited to a small gang of people who somehow passed through the beginner sieve. (most commonly by being forced through it under parental supervision, or by learning the sport in another country)

Yes, the kind of beginner experience described in the WSJ article is common. That article is a favorable description of a terrible beginner experience. A sieve is exactly what it is, and I think it is wasteful.

One way to train beginners is to bring them along on control pickup at the end of the meet.

They didn't hang around that long as far as I know.

Certainly in the northeast, the vast majority of orienteering is done by club members, who have a good understanding of maps and are seldom seem kneeling, well maybe, after just whacking your knee on a rock.
Most of those in this area got through the beginner sieve on their own. No parental pushing, and learned in the USA.
Now that does exclude those who won't or can't figure it out, and I do agree that beginner instruction can be lacking or poor at meets.
Then again some people LIKE to figure it out on their own!

I don't think I would have been tempted by the article, other than the thought that "I could do better than those guys".

Back to talking to journalists...

I see a new newspaper article (Kansas City Star?) about orienteering; it seems to be the result of a press release or media package from Orienteering USA. Way to go!

The question I had the most trouble with was this: "when you see the control, how do you feel?" What I though was, that's too personal a question. Now that I have spent some weeks thinking about it maybe I can say without too much embarrassment I get a rush of endorphins, delicious pleasure. Not anywhere near the pleasure of uncovering a great fossil, which sometimes can be so huge it is rather too much KWIM? And I never know when a great fossil will turn up. Orienteering, I know how much pleasure to expect, and that it will be dispensed in manageable doses. How do you feel?

Bom, not boom.

Boom, bom ... bomb?

Well, the journalist who sparked this thread has published a rather nice paragraph about orienteering. The magazine cover says "Out of the box: adventure gifts" and the story title is "Not an easy wrap". Several other exciting adventures are featured, some with photos, so orienteering is in good company. The paragraph:

Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to navigate from A to B armed only with a compass, topographic map, and your wits. Insiders call orienteering "cunning running" (it's fine to just walk!) and it's a great way to get out on the land, but with an objective. "There's a real surge of what I think hunters feel --a conquest. Yes, I nailed it!" says Una Smith of New Mexico Orienteers. Adults and kids learn to navigate off the grid to find checkpoints--starting at 10 to 20 minute challenges, up to a tougher 5 miles. Meets include coaching and cost from $8 for adults; compass rental is $1. And once you've found yourself, join an optional group potluck. www.nm-orienteers.org.

this sport needs to get on television in a bigger way. i mean, look at shows like 'mantracker,' and 'man v wild.' then look at all the reality competition shows where people are eliminated. we love to see people compete and win. though i'm sure shooting a tv show is the opposite of what many orienteers wish to experience - there's got to be a way to make some good tv and get the sport out there. of course, representing the sport authentically would be tough given how networks like the human drama angle and such. would you let the cameras follow you? actually it would be pretty hilarious to see them try. :)

as a total beginner, i like the idea of friendly coaching- someone walking around with you the first time around if you so desire. also, setting the same course a few weekends in a row seems like a good idea - you'll feel like you achieved something right away.

i would never be interested in this if it hadn't been for my family, who are competitive orienteers and have been doing it since i was little. the sport always seemed so hard to me, and a little scary-- me? alone in the woods? with just a map and compass? but now i see the delight in knowing where you are on a map-using that part of your brain that is quickly being replaced by navigational software and gps; and using your body to get you from A to B; letting your spirit enjoy the outdoors and really paying attention to the features around you. i'll always be a walker and i'm not really into the super competitive angle of this sport, but i really think more people should do it. it's just so good for you.

It's rather like the Chronicles of Amber series by Roger Zelazny. You move forward in confidence and safety, with ease, and the world changes around you in amazing ways. I like the wonderful discovery of features such as water pot holes in streams, caves, and secret passages through rock fields.