Wednesday, September 3, 2008

PA breaks two records in covering the Beijing Olympics 2008

During the Beijing Olympics, PA Sport, leader of global sports information, sent a team of professional journalists and photographers, who were based in Main Press Centre and at the venues, offering comprehensive, instant and on-the-spot service.



According to Pete Whitfield, PA Sport's Global Planning Editor, on its way to the preparation to Beijing Olympic Games, at least two records would be broken. Firstly, PA Sport's team of 27 journalists, the largest ever sent to the Games, which was almost doubled the number sent to the Sydney eight years ago and a significant increase from 19 sent to the Athens Games four years ago. Secondly, PA Sport team would contain for the very first time two multimedia video journalists, who would be Beijing-based and definitely bring a new dimension to the Games' reporting. Game-time coverage will be illustrated by comprehensive results, picture services as well as graphic images.



Beijing promised exciting Games and its handover to London 2012 Games brought great interest to the media giant. PA Sport is accredited directly by the IOC and is allocated more accreditation than the previous games.



For the Beijing Games, PA Sport team includes eleven reporters, and nine out of them stayed in Beijing and the remaining two covered equestrian and sailing events in Hong Kong and Qingdao respectively.



PA Sport's game-time office within the Main Press Centre in Beijing had four sub-editors, results editor, picture editor and two IT staff. In addition to the picture editor in the MPC, there were six photographers –four of them were based in Beijing and the remaining two provided coverage in Hong Kong and Qingdao.



Team in the PA Sport office at the MPC organised which reporter should cover which sport, and reports and photos should be edited and transmitted immediately. PA team at the MPC also organised tickets for the reporters covering high-demanding events, such as the opening and closing ceremonies.



PA Sport's relationship with sport information employers and organizations has assisted privilege in reporting the Beijing Olympics. The MPC team will also deliver daily roundups for all sports either from the British angle or from the global perspective.



PA Sports offers a number of innovative and compelling products and services to all of its clients, namely, news service, wireless, broadcasting, betting, internet, printing, as well as sports photography.



Additionally, an image transferring technology called ShootLive provides live coverage from every event in the Beijing Games. For the photographers, ShootLive transmits images in real time to picture editors. It stores every image on a server and creates communications between photographers and editors. It presents digital images clearly as previews on a monitor to the editor. The best pictures can be quickly selected and edited and delivered to clients. The entire process from camera click at the event to consumers only takes less than 60 seconds.



By People's Daily Online

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