Presentation at 10+3 Media Cooperation Forum
By Juan V. Sarmiento Jr.,
Senior desk Dditor, Philippine Daily Inquirer
The 29th Olympiad in Beijing next year will gather not only athletes and sports officials, but also spectators and media people. In the previous Olympiad in Athens there were some 16,000 athletes and officials and more than 20,000 media people, who covered the different events for the whole world.
I suppose there would be more athletes, officials and media people in Beijing next year, especially from the host country and its neighbors.
From Aug. 8 to Aug. 24, 2008, the Olympic Village will be transformed into a Babel of languages – major and minor ones spoken in some 200 countries and territories, which will take part in the quadrennial Games.
The challenge for the host country and the organizers is to provide a translation service to media, sports officials, athletes and spectators from foreign countries.
The participating countries are expected to send media teams to cover the events for their respective audiences.
Our newspaper, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, for one, will send a team to cover the Olympiad, which returns to Asia after 20 years.
Because we have our own set of readers, our coverage will focus on Filipino athletes - how they are faring in the events in which they are competing. Media outfits from their respective countries will likewise do same.
Dominant Western media outfits will most likely not cover sports events or athletes not familiar to their readers or audiences.
But reporting only about our athletes is not enough. We will have to report on their opponents, too.
Basic information about our athletes and their competitors can give the context, the face, color and texture to our reportage. Some data about the athletes are already provided by their respective Olympic committees.
But the names of the winner or the runner up, and their scores or time are not sufficient.
We will have to know about the athlete’s background. Is he or she a student, an orphan, a young mother or father? What is his or her work (soldier, farmer, painter, poet or maybe an engineer)? What obstacles did he or she overcome to become a winner?
Human interest stories make a more compelling read than straight reporting on scores, or the time clocked by the athletes.
Media entities from each Asean plus 3 country will certainly have more information about their athletes. If they can come up with personal data on their athletes, and make them available to media groups from member countries, we can produce more interesting stories.
Now the challenge is how to collect the additional human interest data and pool them so they can be accessed by media entities not only from the Asean plus 3 members but also from other countries.
Newspapers or media entities can post the information on their websites. These, in turn, can be linked to or centralized on a single website.
We can also share the stories that appeared in our media platforms so that others, who are interested in doing a story on the same topic, could use them as background material. Who knows the Filipino athletes better than the Filipino journalists do? The same applies to other journalists covering the athletes who represent their countries.
Sharing information and stories about our athletes and teams will certainly be beneficial to our media outfits and our readers and audiences.
Thank you.
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