The research data was collected during the Olympic Games fortnight,with the exception of Beijing,which took place two years before the Beijing 2008 Games.
For Salt Lake City,Athens and Torino,the first week of Olympic fortnight was spent within the press room,planning the identification of key contacts and remaining within the facility to observe what took place.During this time,key information was also collected.Concurrently,time was spent becoming familiar with the city and developing a broad awareness of how non-accredited media might undertake their work at the Games.
During the second week we gathered information about the main cultural promoters within the NAMC.Throughout the Olympic fortnight,documentation was gathered on daily news releases,monitoring of journalist participation,and promotion of other cultural activities.
During the final days,the remaining interviews were undertaken,and we dedicated time to engage with local groups at cultural events.
Main Findings
Operational Structure and Function of the NAMC:
The NAMC is an active centre of information for the media,attracting a wide diversity of journalists representing not only mainstream media—as is the case in the accredited centres—but also smaller outlets such as specialist culture,trade magazines and community radio stations.The majority of registered journalists represented domestic media(national and local)but there was a clear effort to attract international journalists,whom appeared to be treated with extra special care and attention.The NAMC provided daily briefings about the political,social and cultural issues surrounding the Games,while the accredited centres focused on the sporting competitions and IOC related matters exclusively.
The NAMC is generally located in a central city location to ensure maximum representation of daily city-life stories.The NAMC offers a relaxing and comfortable environment compared with the accredited centres.It makes a point of offering good quality food and refreshments,representative of the local gastronomy;it showcases the work of the main public agencies representing tourism,heritage,the arts and offers related services to journalists;it offers daily afternoon and evening functions providing a taste of local cultural heritage.The NAMC has no official link to the accredited centres but ensures representation of the Olympic organising committee in all non-sporting related issues such as the official cultural,educational and environmental programmes.
Our stakeholder interviewees,representing key governmental and corporate groups,insisted that the NAMC provides a good platform to present their work.This is because the management team is easily accessible to public agencies and related organisations compared with the strict regulations of the Olympic organising committee within the official media centres.The NAMC provides a venue for high profile presentations that were not featured in the accredited centres,as the latter tend to be consumed by news concerning the sporting competitions.For example,in Athens,the NAMC was the venue for the Olympic Truce initiative,attended by the Greek and UK PMs,Royal family of Spain,etc.
However,the media value of the cultural stories was not always evident,since many of these events were not highly reported.Despite its diversity,information about its purpose was not always made clear to journalists.Furthermore,the amount of local guests linked to special presentations sometimes outnumbered that of journalists.Consequently,some events seemed to act more as private parties than international media opportunities.Also,the range of activities presented was unbalanced,as the main emphasis was to project the interests of the key NAMC stakeholders(mainly,tourist and economic development agencies and some corporate sponsors).As such,although the NAMCs are open to contributions from all sorts of cultural groups,the majority of presentations addressed the interests of key local public agencies in terms of tourism and business attraction rather than the local artistic community and wider population.This was evident in the tone of many cultural presentations,where traditional forms—more consistent with tourist promotions—dominated over contemporary expressions.
