Rumblings from the Beijing foreign correspondent community are that BOCOG is not the world's sharpest organization when it comes to PR. Sluggish, bureaucratic and drip-feeding dull information are some of the kinder things that have been said about it. China's foreign media corps, hardened by years of travel restrictions, detentions and Waiban scoldings, can be forgiven for greeting BOCOG's communication efforts with an extra helping of jaded cynicism. But what about journalists overseas?

Imagethief was interested to stumbled upon an opinion piece in an online Olympic newsletter this morning. The editor goes out of his way to point out what a shabby job BOCOG is doing compared to other recent OCOGs who were a year out from their own games:

Compared to past Olympics, Beijing scores close to a zero in outreach to the foreign media, at least compared to standards set by past Games. At this stage of the 2004 Olympics, there was a daily flow of press releases and phone calls from Athens. It was the same four years earlier for Sydney.

Spokesmen for those organizing committees -- as well as government agencies -- were well-known and easily reachable by phone or email. They could speak with authority and knowledge to reporters seeking information about the Games.

Such is not the case for Beijing. An under-sized media relations team at BOCOG has neither the resources nor the power to comment on Olympic preparations. Municipal and national governments, despite their substantial role in matters of public security and transportation, have explained little or nothing to non-Chinese media.

Ed Hula, Editor in Chief
Around the Rings

Ouch. Mr. Hula has some praise for BOCOG's website, and acknowledges the language hurdles that need to be overcome. But his overall verdict is harsh. He makes the weekly press conferences sound borderline pointless.

Recently many observers, including Imagethief, have tended to focus upon the potentially incendiary issues surrounding Olympic-related activism. But to obsess about that risks losing sight of the fact that there is a great deal of day-to-day communication donkey-work that goes into making an event like the Olympics work.

Chinese bureaucracies are not known for their love of media donkey-work. This is a nation where bureaucracy comes from a tradition of media control rather than media engagement. Has BOCOG inherited a bit too much of that tradition? Or are they simply under-resourced and overwhelmed by the task? Or is this just pre-game warm-up and they've yet to hit their stride? They've hired a top-notch international PR firm (not Imagethief's) but a PR firm will only be as good as the resources BOCOG gives it.

Two days from now the one-year countdown begins. Several journalists Imagethief has spoken to have said that this marks the beginning of the Olympic lead-up in earnest. The Olympics are no longer some magical thing on a distant horizon. They are right around the corner. It will take more than flashy venues to make the games succeed. An Olympic Games is first and foremost a media event, and this is the time when BOCOG should be tuning up its media engagement machine and making sure that it is equipped to satisfy not just China-based journalists, but journalists around the world.

Is BOCOG ready for this? Is it prepared for what is headed its way? And if it can't manage the runup to the games well, what will that mean on game-day itself?

Note: Imagethief is a tag minimalist as a look at my tag cloud will show. But in honor of one-year countdown, which starts Wednesday, I've added an "Olympics" tag. I expect I'll be writing more about this in the coming year.

Note 2: Imagethief has been informed that Around the Rings is a subscription service and that their op-eds are normally not publicly available (although this one was). The article itself may revert to subscriber-only views at some point. Around the Rings have thoughtfully given me permission to keep the posted extract. I appreciate their cooperation.