Tag Archives: Los Angeles Times

Newspaper Olympics coverage varies: Philly papers cut back; LA Times, USA Today all-in

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Special Report:

Staffing the Olympics used to be a no-brainer for major newspapers. The Games are a major worldwide event and you air-mail as many reporters as possible.

I was among 15 staffers for the Chicago Tribune during the 2000 Games in Sydney.

Obviously, times, priorities, and most importantly, economics have changed. It’s no longer automatic to send an army of staffers to cover an Olympics.

In fact, the Philadelphia Daily News and Inquirer initially decided skip the trip to London. They returned the five credentials issued to the papers. However, at the last minute, the editors decided to send Phil Sheridan.

Said Josh Barnett, executive sports editor for the Philadelphia Daily News on the overall decision: “It’s exclusively a financial decision. It’s a significant commitment (to staff an Olympics). With dwindling resources, you have to make decision of how and where to best use your people. It was a choice we didn’t want to make, but it was something we had to do.”

Barnett added, “I hope this is an anomaly for us as opposed to the norm.”

The St. Paul Pioneer-Press also made the same decision, electing not to send a staffer to London. Meanwhile, the Pioneer-Press’ main competitor, Glen Crevier of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, has two writers and a photographer in London.

Mike Bass, senior editor/sports for the Pioneer-Press, explained:

“There’s the realization that our reporter/columnist would likely make a greater impact covering local teams and issues than at the Olympics. There is a risk in all this, of course. If a major story breaks that involves an athlete from our market, we wouldn’t be there to cover it. Then again, if the story is big enough, the wires would certainly cover it in some way and we could try to supplement it. With the size of staff we have, these are the decisions we have to make all the time.”

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On the other side of the spectrum, there’s the Los Angeles Times and USA Today. The Times isn’t cutting back. It has 13 staffers in London.

Sports editor Mike James said the Olympics have been a staple of the Times’ sports coverage through the years.

“We think of the Olympics as one of our franchise opportunities,” James said. “It’s a chance for us to broaden our readership. You get a lot of interest from people who don’t normally read our section during the Olympics.”

James added, “I didn’t have to do a sales job (to upper management). They recognize the Olympics are an important thing we do during two-plus weeks.”

USA Today also is applying full-court treatment. Dave Morgan, senior VP for content and editor in chief for the USA Today sports media group, noted the staffing breakdown:

“We have about 48 reporters/editors, about 20 photographers, 11 attached to video and 5 for office administration and support (which includes circulation of our International edition). So 84 in all.”

That’s up from 60 in Beijing, he said:  “With the growth of the USAT Sports Media Group, we now include US Presswire (all-sports photo agency that we bought last year) and are fully coordinated with our Broadcast team on the video side so that’s where the growth is.”

However, even though it is increasing its digital presence, Morgan said the newspaper remains the prime focus.

“We see the newspaper as the sizzle reel for all the work appearing across our digital platforms,” Morgan said. “We will be creating much more content on a daily basis than we can hope to publish in print, and of course we don’t print every day, so the newspaper can’t be our only focus. But it is still our flagship product that best differentiates our content for the audience.”

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Those appear to be the extreme cases of high and low. Most papers are somewhere in between, probably more on the low side.

For example, the Chicago Tribune has dropped from 15 staffers in 2000 to 9 in Beijing to 5 (all writers) in London this year.

The reason? “Economics. Like so many,” said Mike Kellams, the Tribune’s associate managing editor for sports.

However, Kellams stressed the Olympics remains a priority to the Tribune.

“I’m also trying to strike the balance between news (not just events) and analysis,” Kellams said. “For the first time, we’ll better exploit Phil Hersh’s Olympic expertise (covering his 16th Olympics) by allowing him to write columns each day from the Games. I expect those to be smart and insightful as we know Phil’s work to be. I also expect it will be the kind of Olympic stories that only someone with his vast experience can first recognize and then tell to our readers.”

Minneapolis’ Crevier said the modern newspaper has to play the role of looking ahead in its Olympic coverage.

“I think it is important for print publications to look ahead to what is happening today,” Crevier said. “With a five-hour time difference, results and game coverage will seem stale in the daily paper the next day.”

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When asked about staffing for the games, Mark Jones, director of communications for the USOC, said interest remains strong in coverage for the Olympics.

“No one is immune to the changes that have occurred in the media landscape, but interest and coverage of the Games seems to continue to be a priority,” Jones said.

The difference, he said, is that more sports web sites are staffing the Games than ever before. FoxSports.com has a made a big commitment for the first time.

“We continue to see changes in the media landscape and certainly have more and more Internet-only news organizations accredited for the Olympic Games and covering the Games,” Jones said.

 

 

 

 

 

Pressure to fill Ebersol’s shoes: NBC’s Larazus now squarely in Olympics spotlight

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It’s finally here.

After all the countdowns, hype and preparation, the opening ceremonies are set for Friday.

Few people will be feeling the pressure more in London than Mark Lazarus. All the NBC Sports chairman has to do is step into the huge Olympics TV legacy left by Dick Ebersol.

Here’s my look at Lazarus and NBC in a story that also ran Sunday in the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune:

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Mark Lazarus is an affable man, but he seems to prefer to be in the background.

The Olympics, though, will thrust him squarely in the intense spotlight created, in part, by his predecessor, Dick Ebersol.

Lazarus, 48, takes control when NBC begins its massive coverage of the Summer Olympics next week. When Ebersol resigned suddenly in a contract dispute in May, 2011, Lazarus stepped in as chairman of the NBC Sports Group; Ebersol will be on hand as a consultant in London.

Lazarus joins a select group. With a couple of exceptions (yes, CBS actually tabbed Tim McCarver to be a co-host for the ’92 Winter Games), Olympic television coverage in the U.S. has been guided by two men: Roone Arledge and Ebersol.

Arledge designed the up-close-and-personal template of getting Americans to develop a bond with the athletes during his Olympic TV days at ABC. His protégé, Ebersol, refined the approach to accommodate a seemingly endless amount of coverage during nine Olympics for NBC.

Lazarus now is charged with shepherding 5,535 hours of coverage across NBC’s multiple platforms. He ultimately will be held responsible for producing ratings and, just as important, critical acclaim for the network’s $1.18 billion investment in these Games.

Indeed, it is a daunting, if not overwhelming task. During a recent press conference in New York, which included his boss, Steve Burke, the CEO of NBC Universal, Lazarus seemed taken aback when asked about the potential for his Olympics legacy. NBC now has the rights for the Summer and Winter Games through 2020.

“I don’t think you can create a legacy with one Games,” Lazarus said. “So my strong preference is to be invited back to do the next one.”

Unlike Ebersol, who had an extensive production background, Lazarus worked his way up through the business side of the industry. He was president of Turner Entertainment Group before coming over to NBC.

So Lazarus won’t be literally calling every shot as Ebersol did; he doubled as executive producer during his Olympics run. Lazarus will consult with Ebersol, who uncharacteristically is keeping a low profile, denying media requests for interviews.

“My job is to help steward this enormous, talented team to help make judgments and decisions on where we’re going to air product and how we’re going to air product,” Lazarus said.

Lazarus did register a big first impression with his decision to make everything available live on NBCOlympics.com (with the exception of the opening and closing ceremonies). Previously, Ebersol had resisted real-time digital coverage for the marquee sports such as track, swimming and gymnastics, preferring to save it all the network’s prime-time telecasts.

However, when it comes to content, Lazarus isn’t looking to reinvent the Olympic wheel. Indeed, virtually every main cog of the NBC machine in London, from executive producer Jim Bell to host Bob Costas, was nurtured under Ebersol.

“What did I learn from Dick?” Bell said. “Oh, let’s see. Only everything.”

Ebersol taught Bell pacing (“keep it moving”), the importance of planning down to the minute for the primetime telecast, and how to change those plans when the unexpected occurs.

At the core, carrying the link back to Arledge, is storytelling, Bell said.

The Olympics doesn’t deliver a typical sports audience. According to its surveys, NBC says 69 million people who tuned into the Beijing Olympics in 2008 never watched a single NFL football game that season. Typically, women make up more than half the viewership for an Olympics.

“Storytelling is the guiding principle of Olympic coverage,” Bell said. “You’re talking about sports that most people don’t follow. So it is important to personalize those athletes.”

Ultimately, regardless of all the planning, NBC needs good, compelling stories from the competition. NBC’s rating built as swimmer Michael Phelps continued his bid for eight gold medals in 2008. NBC could use similar storylines in 2012.

“By one-hundredth of a second or less, in the second of eight gold medal races, if Michael Phelps take silver there, his teammates take silver in a relay race, then the whole storyline changes,” Costas said.  “And that undoubtedly diminishes the rating.”

Thanks to creative scheduling in Beijing, NBC was able to air swimming and other events live in primetime. That won’t be the case in London (eight hours ahead of Los Angeles).

Without live coverage in primetime, Lazarus said ratings for this year’s Olympics likely will be lower than 2008. And even with the massive amount of commercials, NBC still expects to lose money on the Games, he said.

Lazarus will be held ultimately accountable from all angles. Typically, he tried to downplay his role.

“I don’t have an individual goal on the mark I want to leave on the games,” Lazarus said.  “I think that we want to come out of this with a sense that the viewing population of America says, ‘That was a fun two weeks, I can’t wait to do it again.’”

Yet Lazarus knows—everyone knows—what is at stake for him as head of his first Olympic. If things go awry, Costas, noting that the 2014 Winter Games are in a remote part of Russia, warned Lazarus of the consequences.

“You’re going to Sochi, if only as punishment,” Costas said.