By Steve Parry (former Reuters Sports Editor)
The Olympics can be a profoundly intimidating assignment for the inexperienced journalist covering the Games for the first time. And the presssure will never be greater than at next year’s Beijing Games which are creating unprecedented levels of global interest.
Nearly 22,000 accredited media will scramble to be first to tell the stories of the 10,500 athletes from 202 nations competing in the Games. A further 10,000 unregistered news reporters are also expected to converge on Beijing to report the atmosphere of the host city.
Amid this media feeding frenzy, Xinhua, China’s official news agency, faces a two-fold challenge. As the host agency appointed by the IOC, Xinhua’s primary function will be to provide comprehensive coverage for Chinese news organisations.
But it can also play an important role in helping foreign journalists develop their understanding of China’s political and economic perspectives and cultural values.
As part of their preparations for the 2008 Games, 30 Xinhua journalists took part in two six-day Olympic reporting workshops in Beijing in April, organised jointly by Reuters and Xinhua.
The workshops also launched a series of events marking this year’s 50th anniversary of the business partnership between Reuters and Xinhua.
They were run by two veteran journalists, Steve Parry and Brian Williams, who between them worked for Reuters for over 70 years. Parry was Sports Editor for 18 years and has been to 19 Olympics, and Williams was Chief Correspondent in a dozen countries and has covered seven Games.
Xinhua reporters and editors were joined by 100 Beijing journalists from 20 news organisations at the formal opening, at which Parry and Williams spoke about Reuters Games preparations and coverage.
Alex Hungate, Managing Director of Reuters Asia, said: "For any nation the Olympic Games is a moment the world looks on, and for a sports journalist one of the most crucial moments of their reporting life."
The workshops examined the practicalities of Olympic reporting and devoted a full day to the coverage of doping, including a half-day writing exercise on drugs at the 2004 Athens Games.
Other daily writing exercises included individual Games stories such as the 110m hurdles victory of China’s Liu Xiang in Athens and the swimming feats of Eric “the eel” Moussambani in Sydney.
The second workshop also visited SportAccord, the annual convention which brings together the most powerful figures in the global sports industry.
During this visit, participants attended a media operations workshop and joined a routine IOC press briefing, later sitting beside a lake in a Beijing park to analyse the day’s news points.
Parry also conducted a similar workshop with Xinhua journalists in 2006 and by the end of this year’s courses was able to see an improvement in the Olympic reporting skills of the participants.
“Part of our role was also to show how aggressively the western media cover the Olympics and to explain why Xinhua journalists will need to be assertive in their Games-time news gathering,” Parry said.
“This has become even more relevant since the Olympics-related relaxation of news reporting rules for foreign media in China, which now permit reporters to interview anyone, anywhere, any time.
“Last year there was shock, horror and disbelief when I asked participants to pick up the phone and get first-hand quotes for a feature on China’s 2008 medal prospects.
‘But we never do that,’ I was told.
“This year was quite different. They understood the point very clearly and most of them got usable quotes.
“There was still hesitation at the prospect of writing anything even faintly critical of Beijing, but I guess you can’t jump all the hurdles at the same time. That might be a goal for a subsequent workshop.”