Journalistic Test: Covers the limited Tokyo Olympics

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Journalists participating in the Times Olympics do much more than dismantle play-specific performances and report the winners of each event. They take advantage of the local color of the host city, get behind the scenes of great action, and explore the lives of athletes in an intimate and organic way.

One of the joys of reporting at the Olympics is randomness, an adventure that comes from being at an event with representatives from 200 countries, said Ken Belson, a sports reporter who is one of Japan’s more than 30 people at the Tokyo Games. To The Times.

Finding these scenes and moments is much harder at these Olympics, where the competition started this week.

Cases of coronavirus are on the rise, and Tokyo is still in a state of emergency during the games. Several Olympic staff and athletes have recently received a positive result. The fear of the games was already high; polls have shown that the majority of Japanese citizens believe that the Olympics should have been canceled.

How they pull this off, the impact, if any, on athletes and events is quite dynamic to see, said Randy Archibold, a journalist for Timess Sports.

Mr. Archibold is also in Japan, where he oversees the desktop’s extensive report. It includes in-depth features, plug-in reporting in a daily press conference online, and a stronger presence in print.

The Tokyo Organizing Committee and the Japanese government have set strict limits. Daily testing is mandatory for all visitors. Athletes do not roam freely, and many leave after the race. There are no international viewers, and just a few weeks ago, Japanese viewers were also blocked.

Some of these protocols interfere with news gathering. Capacity at each event is limited, and journalists are prohibited from conducting interviews outside press areas and driving on public transportation.

These are the 11th Olympics, described by journalist Juliet Macur. Past events brought unique stresses, complications and demands, he said, but nothing compares to the loss of free movement he now faces.

Every Olympian has had a moment when you hold your breath thinking: What happens? and it always works, Mrs. Macur said. This, of course, is its about degree.

While most of the events are expected to take place under as normal conditions as possible, the raging crowds of the arena, the bustling street parties and hordes of flag-waving fans through the host city of the parades are gone.

It’s a journalistic test for us to figure out how to make things as vivid as possible when we don’t have the access or festive atmosphere used to make the Olympics what Macur said.

For Mr Belson, the cultural loss is particularly disappointing. He lived for 12 years in Tokyo, where he wrote about Japanese business for several publications, including The Times, before returning to New York in 2004. He began preparing for the games three years ago.

I was really looking forward to being able to tell a Japanese story to our readers about my experiences there, Mr. Belson said. Unfortunately, this is becoming more difficult.

Andrew Keh talks about his third Olympics. Like most reporters, he enjoys the horrific stories of mine edges. At the Winter Games 2018 in Pyeongchang, South Korea, Keh developed local cuisine. In Rio in 2016, he wrote about the changes made to the official table tennis ball, complaining about the athletes. His colleague John Branch profiled Zamboni drivers in Pyeongchang. In the London Games in 2012, Mr Belson dived into the exchange experience-type subculture of the Olympic pins trade.

The reason I always liked the Olympics is just a large number of athletes, Mr Keh said. Everyone represents a potential conversation, a potential seed of a story, a possible opportunity to learn something.

Keh developed the Tokyo Games into a great situation for the journalist. He said the challenge of working in strange and inconvenient conditions should produce interesting journalism. There have never been such Olympics.

That’s why The Times recently sent to Japan about the same number of journalists, journalists, and multimedia journalists who have worked on previous games. This does not include the Tokyo office of the international workplace, where the head of the office, Motoko Rich, has reported the start of the games or the Seoul Times newsroom.

Tokyo 2020 was already a year back. Critics continue to question the wisdom of holding two-week events involving thousands of athletes, officials and volunteers where the rate of the coronavirus is on the rise. No matter what happens, important stories still need to be reported.