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.