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From the Olympics Toword Tomorrow
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Olympic high-tech info tools boon for journalists
Or how could one single journalist possibly get all those punchy lines from the winning, or losing, athletes even though events took place simultaneously in venues separated by hours by car?
And write as if they remembered birthdays and other personal details of all the 2,400 athletes from 72 countries who competed in the Nagano Games?
If a little secret of modern-day, high-tech journalism must be out, the thanks must go the wonders of high technology which were a hallmark of the Nagano Winter Games.
Journalists who missed out an Olympic event, any event, could tap into a ''Video on Demand'' (VOD) system and call up any video footage from the past and present Olympics within seconds.
For those who needed ''quotes'' from athletes to enliven their stories, they could always tap into ''Info '98,'' an on-line news and information system available free to all accredited journalists -- 8,000 of them -- covering the Games.
These modern-day journalistic ''tools'' turned the coverage of the 68 medal events packed over 16 days into a manageable task even for news organizations which could not afford to send a battalion of journalists to Nagano.
Jeffrey Bartholet, the Tokyo bureau chief of U.S. news magazine Newsweek, is one such example.
Bartholet said he has found the VOD system handy when writing a story about unexpected results or events he failed to view due to clashing schedules, citing the unexpected victory of Japanese skier Tae Satoya who won the gold medal in the women's freestyle moguls.
''Of course, you can't beat being there but obviously this is helpful when you can't cover every venue,'' he said.
About the Info system, Stephen Dettre, results and Info system manager for the 2000 Sydney Olympics said, ''It was obviously put in as a 'nice thing to have,' but it has become a working tool. So it has gone from being nice-to-have to an essential tool that journalists all use.''
The Info system, which was a rage among journalists covering the Nagano Olympics, was around since the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 in its current form, courtesy International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) of the United States.
But the Atlanta system had flopped and IBM took the blame for marking the Atlanta Games as the ''glitch games'' in the minds of journalists.
IBM then took a deep look into the problem, fixed up the glitches and gave it some more, which -- in the words of Rick Reilly, a columnist of the U.S. weekly Sports Illustrated -- has reached ''an art form.''
At the Nagano Main Press Center or the many other press centers set up by Nagano Olympic organizers at various Olympic venues, journalists could tap into one of the 1,300 IBM on-line terminals and get all relevant data related to the Olympic Games.
The data offered included biographies of athletes, all games results, historical records, ''flash'' quotes of top and hot athletes and other quote-worthy figures after each event, transportation schedules and detailed weather forecasts, updated dozens of times each day. You could even do e-mail, free, on the system.
Nagano Olympic organizers said the Info system recorded 5.1 million ''hits'' -- the number of times the computer system was accessed by users -- over a two-week period during the Games.
''We're quite astonished about the high-level demand,'' said Nagano Olympic organizing committee (NAOC) telecommunications manager Ikuo Naito.
Naito said the VOD system recorded 110,000 hits since the system went into operation Jan. 24 -- almost double their projected total access volume of 60,000.
''Info '98'' and VOD are just two highlights of the much-ballyhooed ''high-tech Olympics'' in Nagano.
To showcase Japan's high-tech prowess, Nagano Olympic organizers also installed bar-code accreditation passes, eye-scanning and fingerprint access control systems, video conferencing consoles and a portable phone so small that it could be worn on the wrist or suspended from the neck like a pendant.
Will the VOD and wristwatch-size cell phones, both prototypes developed by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT), be on the market one day? You bet.
NTT spokesman Toshinobu Nakajima says NTT is already conducting studies to improve product quality with an eye toward marketing all those gadgets. (Kyodo News)
No part of the article, photographs, or illustrations presented here may be printed or used without permission.
Copyright 1998 The Shinano Mainichi Shimbun