Olympians blog for news sites

Interesting new trend of people involved in news events blogging for media sites continues with the Olympics. Just as delegate blogs gave interesting new perspectives during the Democratic National Convention, now we're hearing directly from the Olympic atheletes themselves.

Maritza Correia, a member of the U.S. swimming team, is blogging for the St. Petersburg Times Web site.

Scott Goldblatt is also on the U.S. swim team and is blogging for nj.com.

Goldblatt reports on the blog rules at the Olympics. Each country, he says, has the write to choose what they allow. Canada, he reports, is not allowing its atheletes to blog. U.S. officials told Goldblatt he can blog, "as long as I do not move into the territory of journalism? But where does that line get drawn? …"

Don't get us started on that one!

NJ.com sports producer David Liss told Goldblatt, "The IOC would certainly be hypocritical to call a blogger a journalist, since I'm sure it's (the IOC) not issuing any press credentials to Joe Blogger. The IOC also couldn't presumably own your thoughts and therefore hold the rights to them."

Good question -- anyone know if the IOC has issued any credentials to bloggers, or if any bloggers applied and got rejected?

Meanwhile, here are some of the professional journalists blogging the Olympics:

• Newsweek correspondents in a group blog
• Baltimore Sun Sun sports editor Randy Harvey is reporting throughout the Olympics
• Indianapolis Star photographer Robert Scheer
• Mark Purdy for the San Jose Mercury News and other Knight Ridder sites
• Athens Watch by Jeff Zillgitt and Adam Hirshfield for USATODAY.com
• NBC's Kerry Sanders

August 16, 2004 | BY JONATHAN DUBE