Tags

Columbia Journalism Review content tagged Olympics

1. July 31, 2012 05:02 PM

   Daily News front page splash ‘flat wrong,’ says NBC

   Reports that Today Show anchor Hoda Kotb was being flown into London to boost ratings are false, the network claims

   By Hazel Sheffield

   The New York Daily News was quick to splash Tuesday’s front page with news that NBC’s Hoda Kotb was being flown in to rescue the Today Show’s Olympics coverage from Savannah Guthrie. The paper used two sources at NBC to confirm that Kotb had been flown to London to “rescue” the team because their pre-Olympics broadcast had fallen behind ABC...

   Continue reading
2. August 2, 2012 06:50 AM

   Audit Notes: Taibbi on TBTF, the paranoid rich, Olympics

   An NYT op-ed elides some critical context

   By Ryan Chittum

   It's unclear why The New York Times is running op-eds on finance from a guy who is still operating under an SEC ban as part of a settlement in a kickback investigation. But Steve Rattner, Obama's former car czar, gets prime space to argue that Too Big to Fail banks should remain Too Big to Fail. A bit of recent...

   Continue reading
3. August 8, 2012 04:30 PM

   Between the Spreadsheets

   CJR and the Tow Center's new column on data visualization takes on the Olympics

   By Anna Codrea-Rado

   Data journalism and information visualization is a burgeoning field. Every week, Between the Spreadsheets will analyze, interrogate, and explore emerging work in this area. Between the Spreadsheets is brought to you by CJR and Columbia's Tow Center for Digital Journalism. Numbers have always informed reporting. But in the last couple of years, the appetite for big data, coupled with a...

   Continue reading
4. August 13, 2012 02:56 PM

   Drugs and the Olympics

   What if reporters imbedded with athletes during training?

   By Robert Weintraub

   The first week of the Olympics is traditionally given over to complaints about NBC’s coverage, as we discussed last week. By the second week, the quadrennial controversy shifts to speculation about the use of illegal drugs by the winners. This time around, attention focused on two athletes: Jamaican superstar Usain Bolt, who treats the sprints like a Sunday jog around...

   Continue reading
5. August 6, 2012 11:11 AM

   ESPN’s Tim Tebow lovefest

   Shut out of the Olympics, the 'Worldwide Leader In Sports' puts NFL front and center

   By Robert Weintraub

   US sports coverage last week was split neatly into two distinct, Jungian halves, represented by those sportscasting sweethearts, married couple Dan Hicks and Hannah Storm. Hicks works for NBC, and called the swimming competition at the London Olympics. His enthusiastic descriptions of Michael Phelps and Missy Franklin winning gold appeared only on tape delay during prime time, a four-hour show...

   Continue reading
6. August 22, 2012 11:00 AM

   Pomp and circumstance: How do Americans see the Brits?

   Two American correspondents tell how they explain British idiosyncrasies

   By Hazel Sheffield

   It took the Olympics to prove it: Britain might as well be Middle Earth to most Americans. Only that could explain why NBC hosts told opening ceremony viewers to Google the identity of Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, without a trace of irony. Or that, during the closing ceremony, I had to explain to American friends...

   Continue reading
7. July 18, 2012 03:00 PM

   Ready, set for an interactive Olympics

   Outlets strike deals to bump viewer engagement during the games

   By Hazel Sheffield

   The London Olympics officially open in two weeks, which means media outlets are gearing up to cover them. That requires a totally new game plan (apologies) than at the Beijing Olympics four years ago, when Twitter was in its infancy and networks saw live webstreaming as competition to their nightly news broadcasts. In 2012, Olympics coverage is going cross-platform. This...

   Continue reading
8. August 3, 2012 06:50 AM

   The Olympics’s women coverage

   It should be about female athletes' achievements, but it's often more focused on their chromosomes

   By Jennifer Vanasco

   In her column, Minority Reports, Jennifer Vanasco analyzes how the mainstream media covers social minorities. Gender issues were threaded throughout the coverage of the Olympic games this week, beginning with the opening ceremonies, which showcased that, for the first time, all of the 204 delegations included a female athlete. London 2012 has been dubbed “The Year of the Woman,” noted...

   Continue reading
9. August 8, 2012 06:50 AM

   The science of performance

   Reuters writer reviews the research amid London Olympics

   By Curtis Brainard

   Does sex diminish athletic vigor? Does athletic tape enhance it? These are just a few of the questions that one Reuters correspondent has sought to answer amidst the toil, tears, and sweat at the Summer Olympics in London. Kate Kelland, who covers health and science in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa for the wire service, has been on the...

   Continue reading