“It sounds almost like Forrest Gump, but one day I just got up and started running.”
That’s Andrew Morse, president and publisher of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, when asked for his origin story. It was 2010. Morse was living in New York City, with two little kids, an intense job as an ABC News producer and not much time for himself. He began getting up at 4:45 a.m. to hit the path along the Hudson River. Soon he was doing 4 miles, then 4 became 5 and 5 became 6 and just a few months later he ran his first race: the TCS New York City Marathon.
Morse saw it as a bucket-list thing. Never again, he said when he finished. That was almost 15 years — plus 12 marathons, three ultramarathons and an Ironman — ago.
When Morse drew the movie comparison, he was almost certainly thinking of the adult Forrest, who unceremoniously stepped off his Greenbow, Alabama, front porch one day and ended up running for three years, two months, 14 days and 16 hours.
But it goes deeper. You remember the earlier scene when young Forrest is hobbling away from bike-riding bullies and suddenly his leg braces disintegrate, their broken bits flying off and scattering on the dirt road, letting him run unencumbered? It’s more like that.
Unlike Forrest, Morse has no plans to abruptly stop and go home. He loves it too much.
“Something happens to me when I run where, the first 6 or 7 miles, I’m cycling through all the problems of my day, and all the stresses and all the hassles,” said Morse, now 51, who in 2023 took over the helm of the AJC to lead its multiplatform expansion. “And then my head just clears, and I reach this really incredible place.”
His wife, Ana, said: “Whatever magic happens out there is evident when he comes back.”
Seven years after that first spontaneous run, a friend gave him the Haruki Murakami book, “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.” In it, the Japanese novelist writes: “I run in a void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run to acquire a void.”
Reading it, Morse instantly understood why he loves running so much.
“It’s the one activity I do,” he said, “where frankly I can find peace.”
A Maryland native, Morse began his career in college on the Cornell Daily Sun, going on to work as an ABC News producer for 15 years with stints in London and Hong Kong. In 2011, he went to Bloomberg News as head of U.S. television before moving to CNN two years later, ending up as executive vice president and chief digital officer.
Along the way, assignments included filming a trek to a Mount Everest base camp, sailing a maxi-catamaran trying to break a transatlantic record and reporting stints in Afghanistan and Gaza between 2000 and 2004.
In both war zones, he would occasionally run a few miles with colleagues. “Your feet hit the ground, and it was kind of a reminder of who you are and where you came from,” he explained. But the act of running for running’s sake didn’t take until later.
Once it did, it echoed Morse’s career as well as balance it: If I can do a marathon, can I do a triathlon? OK, now a half Ironman? Full? All right then, now 50 miles? What about a 100-miler in the summer of 2026?
“I do like a challenge, and so professionally I think I’ve sought out opportunities, whether it was a chance to move overseas or cover wars or have jobs that put me on the cutting edge of digital media or to moving to Atlanta, I’ve tended to gravitate toward roles that have been personally challenging as much as they’ve been professionally challenging,” he said.
By early 2022, when he was spearheading the new streaming service CNN+, Morse was a convert. It was a stressful time: first the pressure of getting the concept off the ground, then the upheaval of its cancellation just weeks after its launch when ownership of the news giant changed hands.
“It was a time when I ran a lot,” he said. “I woke up in the morning and went for really long runs, and I worked through the problems so that it enabled me to be in a better place.”
Sometimes a work situation can feel like the late stages of an ultramarathon, he said, when you have to figure out “how am I going to finish this? How am I going to get through it? A lot of those lessons apply.”
Morse acknowledges he doesn’t know how he would cope with professional challenges if he weren’t a runner. Some of his colleagues aren’t sure, either.
Credit: Paul McPherson for Atlanta Track Club
Credit: Paul McPherson for Atlanta Track Club
Erin Malone has worked closely with Morse at both CNN and the AJC, where she is the chief operating officer. While at CNN, she recalls conspiring with the communications director to make sure Morse got in a run the day before any speaking engagement, especially one in which he would need to be on his toes to answer questions on almost any subject. That’s carried over to the AJC, where he conducts monthly town halls.
“By taking care of himself, he is better to, and for, everyone else from a leadership perspective,” said Malone, who ran the AJC Peachtree Road Race with Morse last year.
For a man who is dedicated to running alone — and who last year raced the 50-mile option at the Salt Flats Endurance Runs, which featured 105 runners across four distances in the desert of northwestern Utah — the world’s largest 10K pretty much represents the other end of the spectrum.
“It was one of those added perks,” he said of taking the helm of the race’s title sponsor. “I showed up for the job and they said, ‘Here’s your badge and here’s your office and oh, by the way, you partner with Atlanta Track Club on one of the biggest events of the year,’ and I said ‘That’s incredible.’”
Rich Kenah, the club’s CEO, agreed: “Atlanta Track Club has proudly partnered with the AJC since 1975. But it feels serendipitous to now have a publisher there who knows as much about the positive impacts of running as he does about leading a news-focused media company.”
Lining up on July 4th for the first time in 2023, Morse ran with his son, Holden, now 17. (He also has a 19-year-old daughter, Cecilia.) He likens the joy, the camaraderie, the way the Peachtree is as much about the city as it is about the runners, to the New York City Marathon. The world’s best professionals blazing out front, the people dressed in full costume, people doing shots along the way, people taking the race seriously, people having just plain fun and everything in between — Morse calls the Peachtree “the most egalitarian race I think of, which makes it perfect for Atlanta.”
He also calls it a blast.
Yet even in the mass of humanity running the five boroughs of New York City or amid the 50,000 runners celebrating the Fourth of July, he is able to acquire the void.
“Most races, I do focus inward,” he said. “I put on music and go. But with New York City and Peachtree, in particular, I get energy from the crowd. Still, I’m able to really escape to a pretty special place of peace when I’m running.”
In November, Andrew Morse will be running the TCS New York City Marathon as part of Atlanta Track Club’s Kilometer Kids Charity Team. For more information or to donate, visit atlantatrackclub.org.
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