Ann Killion’s postcard
I miss my friends: Scaled down newspaper contingent in Tokyo a sign of the times, unfortunately.
TOKYO — I miss my Olympic friends.
Oh, not all of them. Many are still here. What up, Christine?
But there aren’t as many here as in the past.
Some of that is due to people growing older and retiring. But a lot of it is due to what’s happening to newspapers.
I think back to Beijing in 2008. A robust group of newspapers were there, even though the industry was already struggling, the overall economy was bad, and the time zone was terrible for American deadlines.
Thirteen years later, the attrition is noticeable. In Tokyo, for one of the biggest news stories on the globe — a pandemic Olympics — there are 16 daily American newspapers on the ground.
That includes the “big four,” outlets that have many reporters and resources on hand: the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. I’d even make it a “big five” because the Los Angeles Times has a big crew.
The rest of us? Mostly solo reporters. Maybe two at the most. One of us — I won’t name names — financed his own trip through reaching out to readers who really wanted him here. A swath of the country from Washington, D.C., to Houston has tons of Olympic athletes but no reporters on hand. Same with much of the Midwest. The Northwest is also missing, despite all the Nike athletes.
And some of my best friends are missing as well. Many of the best female sportswriters gravitate to the Olympics, and over the years we’ve become a passportstamped sorority, popping up around the world every two or four years. To ride predawn buses, gossip in latenight bars. To celebrate romances, comfort each when we miss our kids, console each other over divorces and loss.
And to laugh. The Olympics are funny.
We do all the things that normal friends do, we just do it on the Olympic cycle, while covering the uneven parallel bars or the 400 relay on deadline. While pounding out thousands of words of copy, recording some of the greatest feats in sports.
I know I’m fortunate to be here. Wish they were here too. Maybe in Paris.