Walking That Fine Line p.

By: Ray Glier

A local newspaper has a huge impact on the Olympic Games;
things are already heating up in Atlanta between the
Olympic Committee and the Journal-Constitution
WHEN THE INITIAL excitement over Atlanta's being awarded the 1996 Olympics faded, some Atlantans rolled over and left simple instructions, "Wake me in time to get tickets."
Indeed, some Atlantans probably figured that after the initial story of the city getting the Games was reported, the next big news would be how much tickets cost.
That has hardly been the case.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the city's only major daily, didn't roll over. It went to work with three full-time reporters and an Olympics desk. The newspaper sank its teeth into issues such as the threat of taxpayers being stuck with the bill for the funding of Olympic venues and salaries of the top officials of the local organizing committee, the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games (ACOG).
The newspaper has also chronicled the various turf wars between the city, ACOG, Fulton County and community groups.
In addition, community groups that claim they have been ignored by Olympics organizers have been given a front-page forum to air their grievances.
The Olympics are more than three years away and still far from the playground, where the action is out front for spectators. The action these days is around conference tables and involves contracts, not gold medals.
Yet, even without the sporting events, the newspaper seems to have a bottomless budget of significant stories. It devotes one page in its Sunday Sports section to the Olympics, while another page in Saturday's "Local News" section carries anything from community development to the marketing of the Olympics.
As expected, the paper and ACOG have spatted. The paper's top editor, Ron Martin, says the Journal-Constitution has taken the role of monitoring ACOG's activities because of the impact ACOG's decisions will have on the community?$5.1 billion in revenue for Atlanta and Georgia from 1989-1996.
"We think we've done a fairly steady and aggressive job of covering what they're up to and the various developments," Martin said. "We think the proper role of a newspaper is to move into those areas of coverage where a vacuum exists. As things are established now, there's not really any public process for monitoring what ACOG is doing. So we need to ask those kinds of questions."
One of the questions the newspaper wanted resolved was access.
"Early on, I think the approach was we weren't going to see or hear anything," an Olympics editor, Mike Tiemey, said. "Now they've gotten themselves on the record as saying they are going to be a lot more public with their activities and decision making.
"We have been pretty insistent from the very beginning that the process needs to be more open than it has been."
ACOG CEO Billy Payne said it was never the intention of ACOG to exclude the public from the process.
"We've never had an intention of isolating the opportunity of the Olympics," Payne said.
"It is a difficult job; you are making choices every day and only the winners applaud you and the losers don't like it. The process is eminently fair. We appreciate all the advice we can get from people."
One decision Tiemey says ACOG took little advice on was the creation of the Olympic mascot, Whatizit, a computer-generated mascot that looks a little like a bug. The Journal-Constitution, other media outlets around the country, and the public in Atlanta lampooned ACOG for its choice of the mascot.
General columnist Colin Campbell calls the mascot "the Olympic Maggot."
Another issue that caused disagreement was the newspaper's insistence that ACOG disclose the salaries of its top officials.
The newspaper's attorneys became involved when Olympic officials balked, but ACOG ultimately released those records.
Not only does the Journal-Constitution get as close as it can to the action from its spot on the sidelines, it occasionally gets on the playing field as well.
The paper created a T-shirt with a picture of its Sept. 19, 1990, front page, which carried the news that Atlanta had been awarded the Games. ACOG protested, arguing that federal law gave it exclusive rights to use "Olympics" in marketing its goods so it could raise money to stage the Games.
The paper relented, agreed to cut off sales of the T-shirt by a certain date, and paid ACOG a fee for what shirts it did sell, according to Tiemey.
The newspaper is also producing a monthly newsletter, 1996 Report. Tiemey says ACOG is unhappy with the newsletter, which is sold to Olympic insiders.
Bill Dwyre, sports editor of the Los Angeles Times, the watchdog of the 1984 Olympics in L.A., says the Journal-Constitution, like any paper that covers the Olympics in its back yard, is walking a fine line between producing a journalist's work and being a booster for the community's effort to stage a successful Olympics. Dwyre also says a major daily newspaper can have a "huge" impact on the success of the the Olympic Games.
"The big newspaper in town is then in a position where it has to walk that fine line of being kind of involved in the community excitement, and, at the same time, being journalists and pointing out some of the things that could go wrong, are going wrong, and are screwed up," Dwyre said.
"This sounds self-serving, and I don't mean it to be, but I maintain the 1984 Olympics were absolutely marvelous and they brought this terribly disjointed and diverse community together more than anything I've ever seen. Yet, it took a newspaper every day to reflect that; not just us, but all the newspapers, but particularly us because we were the big guys."
The feud over the T-shirts and salaries helped define the battle lines between ACOG and the Atlanta newspaper, and ACOG's Payne seems to accept that the newspaper has a role other than being a booster of the Olympic movement in Atlanta.
"I personally think they've done a good job," Payne said. "We've disagreed with them at times and informed them. They have disagreed with us and justifiably so informed us. In that context, the relationship is healthy. There is not a special relationship. They have a job and we have a job, and we both do it as best we can."
So the reporting has been fair?
"I didn't say that," Payne said. "I think when they take into consideration the multitude of issues we face, the fact that when we make a decision, like which architect to hire out of 10, and that nine out of 10 are mad except for the one that got it; when they take all of the difficulties and the size of the scope into consideration, they accurately and fairly report, in most cases, what we're doing."