Sports

IOC: Athletes May Blog, But...

by Jordan Yerman | February 16, 2008 at 07:41 am

357 views | 10 Recommendations | 1 comment

The International Olympic Committee is allowing athletes competing in Beijing to blog during the games... sort of.

The IOC has set out guidelines for blogging at the Beijing Games to ensure copyright agreements are not infringed.

They include bans on posting any audio or visual material of action from the games themselves.

The move follows the increasing use of unofficial blogs by athletes in previous Games, including Athens in 2004 and the Turin Winter Games.

"It is required that, when accredited persons at the games post any Olympic content, it be confined solely to their own personal Olympic-related experience," said an IOC statement.

Posting confidential information about other people is also outlawed.

"The IOC considers blogging... as a legitimate form of personal expression and not a form of journalism," the Olympic authority said.

"Blogs should be dignified and in good taste."

I see what the IOC is going for here: a bunch of "I'm-just-happy-to-be-here" blogs, but they'll soon find that stifling content will lead to very boring reading, very quickly. This obsession with copyright (although the games will be Tivo'd 'round the globe from free channels) and PR (though the 2008 Games start with two strikes against them due to their location) will hamstring the blogging effort, more or less dooming it to failure before it begins.

If the content isn't something that can't be found via sound-bite or sportscast, then readers will have no incentive to seek these blogs out. Like some athletes, readers want juice, too!