Lindsay Crouse (journalist)

Lindsay Crouse is an American journalist and film producer.

Crouse grew up in Rhode Island and graduated from Harvard University, where she competed in both track and field and cross country sports events.

She helped produce the 2017 documentary 4.1 Miles, which won an award at the 2017 Peabody awards.

She is currently a senior editor at The New York Times.

Reporting on Nike's lack of maternity support for sponsored athletes

Crouse first wrote about the choices faced by female athletes who also wanted to become mothers in October 2014. She wrote about how female athletes faced pressure to put their babies at risk and continue training and competing, while pregnant, and put their post-natal recoveries at risk.

In May 2019 Crouse reported on Nike's lack of maternity support for the female athletes it sponsors.

Reporting on Nike's pressure on young athletes to lose excessive weight

In November, 2019, Crouse produced a video interview, and wrote an op-ed, about Mary Cain, entitled I Was the Fastest Girl in America, Until I Joined Nike, that was critical of Nike, and its chief coach, Alberto Salazar. 17-year-old Cain was courted to join Nike's team. In theory, Nike's sponsorship of athletes was encouraging youth to seek empowerment, through sport. Crouse helped Cain how she felt bad coaching, from Nike ruined her competitive prospects, and caused her considerable mental distress. Nike's coaches pushed the young athletes Nike sponsored to lose weight. Crouse wrote that the pressure Nike put upon Gracie Gold, "the only other female athlete featured in the last Nike video ad Cain appeared in", triggered an eating disorder so profound that Gold considered taking her own life. Following the publication of the article Nike suspended Salazar.

KGW8 reported Crouse helped Cain report how Nike's weight loss campaign led to her developing RED-S Syndrome, which, in turn, eroded her bone density, which caused her to break five different bones. She also developed amenorrhea, failing to menstruate for three years. They quoted Crouse saying the most disturbing thing about Nike's coaching excesses is that it was completely legal.

Reporting on the new generation of female marathon runners

In January 2020 she described being inspired by a new generation of female athletes, and deciding to begin training so she could compete for a spot on the USA's Olympic team. She said she regarded Shalane Flanagan, the first woman to win a NYC marathon in decades, in 2017, and Des Linden, who won the Boston marathon in 2018, as her "team captains". Like Flanagan and Linden, Crouse made her renewed effort in her mid-thirties. She said she had never imagined she could reach the level she reached. She needed to run a marathon in under 2 hours and 45 minutes. Her best time was 2 hours and 53 minutes - better than her times in college, but short of making the team.

Her comments on an ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend were widely repeated and commented upon

Crouse published on op-ed on her reaction to being told her ex-boyfriend, Michael Polansky, was Lady Gaga's new boyfriend. Marie Claire magazine quoted extensively from Crouse's op-ed, suggesting its readers could learn from her reaction. Crouse described viewing paparazzi pictures of Gaga and Polman, and feeling intimidated, before remembering being sent a candid photo another attendee had snapped of her dancing with her own fiance. Many of the commentaries on her reaction ended with quoting her comparison between the paparazi pictures with her putting the candid snapshot of her and her fiance on her instagram.