Why cover the Olympics?

[SockPuppet]

Newspapers that I'm familiar with have eliminated much of their staffed national coverage to focus on local teams. Space, staff and budgets have been slashed.

Yet I've noticed that the same papers have sent 2 or more staffers to cover the Olympics. Early on the coverage is focused on local angles but this seems to go against the "we have to cut back" philosophy.

 

[Versatile]

Every major metropolitan newspaper has at least a few local athletes in the Olympics. Some won't get any coverage from AP or other wire services.

 

[Moderator1]

If I had the staff size and budget, I would have done it. Lots of casual to non-sports fans perk up during the Olympics. The stuff we've posted thus far is getting good traffic. Yeah, it's wire and available to all papers. I'd still love to have someone there.

 

[steveu]

I look at the audience for the opening ceremonies... what was it, NBC's highest ever? And it got a 40 share... on a Friday night... during summer.

Yeah, I'd say the interest is there.

 

[Mark2010]

Every major metropolitan newspaper has at least a few local athletes in the Olympics. Some won't get any coverage from AP or other wire services.

That's the best argument I've heard in favor of staffing anything. Can you get the coverage any other way?

 

[LongTimeListener]

I look at the audience for the opening ceremonies... what was it, NBC's highest ever? And it got a 40 share... on a Friday night... during summer.

Yeah, I'd say the interest is there.

That's a leap. I look at that point the same way I look at the Super Bowl. How many people watch the Super Bowl, and yet how many people actually read coverage of it?

If the interest is there in your local athletes, it's justifiable. But, I'm sorry, I think very few people read exhaustive coverage of the Opening Ceremonies, and yet everyone seems to write it. The trouble is the people at home have a better view than the reporters in the stadium.

One reason papers send people to the Olympics is that the people are legacy people who have always gone to the Olympics and they start pushing the hell out of it two years in advance like it's the most important thing in the sports world.

 

[steveu]

Well, in the grand scheme of the sports world, the Olympics still draw the viewers. If you're measuring in terms of potential eyeballs it could bring to your website/paper, it sounds like it still gets the job done.

 

[Versatile]

I look at the audience for the opening ceremonies... what was it, NBC's highest ever? And it got a 40 share... on a Friday night... during summer.

Yeah, I'd say the interest is there.

That's a leap. I look at that point the same way I look at the Super Bowl. How many people watch the Super Bowl, and yet how many people actually read coverage of it?

If the interest is there in your local athletes, it's justifiable. But, I'm sorry, I think very few people read exhaustive coverage of the Opening Ceremonies, and yet everyone seems to write it. The trouble is the people at home have a better view than the reporters in the stadium.

One reason papers send people to the Olympics is that the people are legacy people who have always gone to the Olympics and they start pushing the hell out of it two years in advance like it's the most important thing in the sports world.

I agree with this entirely. steveu, your point doesn't make sense because AP copy would draw the same readers for the most part. The only good reason for a metro newspaper that's outside, say, the top 20 to send someone to the Olympics is to cover popular local Olympians.

LongTimeListener's point translates to All-Star games and even championship rounds. If you have no local ties, are your reporters and columnists really going to write something the wires won't have? And if they will, is it going to be good enough to justify the expense? In most cases, no.

I think it's much more valuable to have a beat reporter travel to every road game of the NHL season than to send an armada to the Olympics for coverage of the biggest events that you could get on the wires anyway.

 

[LongTimeListener]

Well, in the grand scheme of the sports world, the Olympics still draw the viewers. If you're measuring in terms of potential eyeballs it could bring to your website/paper, it sounds like it still gets the job done.

I'd be very interested to see newspaper numbers that prove that. It sounds like an old-world guess we used to make that may or may not hold up to scrutiny.

And I would add that with the existence of NBC's website and news stories posted on every event, the local newspaper -- which is not encyclopedic -- has fallen well down the pecking order.

 

[LongTimeListener]

Also: Whatever readership blip you might get has to be scaled against the cost of the trip, which is enormous.

 

[WriteThinking]

This will sound very unscientific, but I think the Olympics get covered by many papers/reporters who wouldn't ordinarily, in a million years, cover something of this scope or in such a faraway location because, well...it is a dream assignment and penultimate event for most any sports writer.

If a paper can afford to do it, at all, and if it decides to do it, at all, it happens just because the reporters/editors want to do it, and yes, they push for it.

It is one of those events that makes you/your paper look big-time/legitimate, and makes you "seen," perception-wise, and the Olympics offer an opportunity to take advantage of that.

 

[steveu]

All the points are valid. But AP won't know the background story. AP's there to write about the big picture. YOUR reporters... YOUR local papers... know the story and can provide deeper coverage.

Does it sell more papers in the end? Probably not. Call me old-school? Probably. I'd rather see a news outlet make a try to cover something besides the same old.

 

[Versatile]

All the points are valid. But AP won't know the background story. AP's there to write about the big picture. YOUR reporters... YOUR local papers... know the story and can provide deeper coverage.

Absolutely not true about an event as big as the Olympics. The AP writers know way more about the Olympics and Olympians than your columnist who covers those sports and athletes once every four years.

 

[SockPuppet]

I would submit that "old school" thinking - "Hey, we've ALWAYS covered the Olympics" - is what has gotten newspapers in trouble in the first place. Sure, for 2 weeks a paper looks "big time" by having bylines from the Olympics. But the other 50 weeks of the year you're coverage universe doesn't stretch beyond a 100 miles. With staffs and budgets already stretched the breaking point, I just think it's tough to justify covering the Olympics.

If your argument is that readers might want the in-depth, background sort of coverage of local Olympians, I've constantly heard the argument that newspaper readers don't have time to read in-depth, background stories.

 

[silvercharm]

Cost has to be the driving factor in this decision. You're probably going to send one of your stars, which is likely going to be one of the highest-paid reporters. Let's just say the median salary is $60-80K for this person. It's a month's salary, at least, to send a reporter to the Olympics, throwing in comp time. That's 6 grand. It's another $4-5 grand for travel, lodging, meals, etc. So you're looking at a bill of at least $10,000 to send a reporter/columnist to the Olympics.

That has to be at the top of the sheet in any pro/con decision as to whether it's worth staffing the Olympics. Can that 10 grand be better spent elsewhere? If not, then perhaps it's worth the spending the dough.

 

[HanSenSE]

If I had the staff size and budget, I would have done it. Lots of casual to non-sports fans perk up during the Olympics. The stuff we've posted thus far is getting good traffic. Yeah, it's wire and available to all papers. I'd still love to have someone there.

I'd like to be there just to avoid news desk getting paranoid over it, since there's one local boxer in there and I don't think they know how to deal with the stuff I deal with every day in sports: "Are we gonna get pictures? Are you sure? Really really sure? With sugar on top?"

T-minus 26 days until the first high school football game, halleujah!

 

[User 11148]

Cost has to be the driving factor in this decision. You're probably going to send one of your stars, which is likely going to be one of the highest-paid reporters. Let's just say the median salary is $60-80K for this person. It's a month's salary, at least, to send a reporter to the Olympics, throwing in comp time. That's 6 grand. It's another $4-5 grand for travel, lodging, meals, etc. So you're looking at a bill of at least $10,000 to send a reporter/columnist to the Olympics.

That has to be at the top of the sheet in any pro/con decision as to whether it's worth staffing the Olympics. Can that 10 grand be better spent elsewhere? If not, then perhaps it's worth the spending the dough.

I don't think you can throw in the salary. That money's going to be spent whether said writer is staffing the Olympics or doing something else. The travel expenses do result from the decision to staff the Olympics. Were I a publisher of a paper that was big enough to consider it, I'd be awfully skeptical that that cash flow pays for itself.

 

[LongTimeListener]

The Olympics, and the editors and writers who are so gung-ho about covering it, have hit on a great workaround to the cash flow problem. Much of the money is due in the form of deposits 18-24 months in advance. But as we all know, the newspaper industry goes month-to-month and by the seat of its pants. So by the time the publisher actually starts thiinking about the Olympics, there has already been so much invested that it would be dumb to let it go to waste.

 

[Mark2010]

I look at the audience for the opening ceremonies... what was it, NBC's highest ever? And it got a 40 share... on a Friday night... during summer.

Yeah, I'd say the interest is there.

That's a leap. I look at that point the same way I look at the Super Bowl. How many people watch the Super Bowl, and yet how many people actually read coverage of it?

If the interest is there in your local athletes, it's justifiable. But, I'm sorry, I think very few people read exhaustive coverage of the Opening Ceremonies, and yet everyone seems to write it. The trouble is the people at home have a better view than the reporters in the stadium.

One reason papers send people to the Olympics is that the people are legacy people who have always gone to the Olympics and they start pushing the hell out of it two years in advance like it's the most important thing in the sports world.

I agree with this entirely. steveu, your point doesn't make sense because AP copy would draw the same readers for the most part. The only good reason for a metro newspaper that's outside, say, the top 20 to send someone to the Olympics is to cover popular local Olympians.

LongTimeListener's point translates to All-Star games and even championship rounds. If you have no local ties, are your reporters and columnists really going to write something the wires won't have? And if they will, is it going to be good enough to justify the expense? In most cases, no.

I think it's much more valuable to have a beat reporter travel to every road game of the NHL season than to send an armada to the Olympics for coverage of the biggest events that you could get on the wires anyway.

I think that's true with any event. If you NEED to have someone on sight, because they can provide something you can't get any other way, then do it. Otherwise, you might as well use the wire services you are already paying for.

 

[Stitch]

Without the Olympics, what else would newspapers put on their websites that ruin the print business model?