USC Annenberg Professor Alan Abrahamson has covered a total of seven Summer and Winter Games throughout his journalism career, and next month's Olympics in Sochi, Russia, will be his eighth. But Abrahamson is the first to admit that each Games is unique – and these Winter Olympics will surely present new situations for journalists.
"When I was working for the Los Angeles Times [covering the Sydney Olympics] in 2000, I was expected to write one story a day," said Abrahamson, who will be covering the entirety of the Winter Games in Sochi from Feb. 7 to 23. "Now, I'm expected to write three or four a day, plus Facebook, plus Twitter… The workload is far more significant and intense."
Abrahamson will be covering the Winter Olympics for NBCOlympics.com. He has written online sports columns for NBC since 2006; he also runs his own website, 3wiresports.com. Before that, he spent 17 years as a sports and news reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Abrahamson also holds the distinction of being the sole U.S.-based writer on the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) Press Commission.
In addition, Abrahamson will be reporting for MSNBC and the Today Show, as well as supervising journalism master's student Lawrence "Law" Murray, who is believed to be the only U.S. university student credentialed as a working journalist at the Sochi Games.
"Law is an exceptionally bright and capable student," said Abrahamson. "He has the ability to do sports analytics, which is a truly unique, breakthrough kind of thing. What he does for pro football and pro basketball simply is not being done in the Olympics sphere, so I want to see him bring this kind of analysis to the Olympic Games."
Murray's presence at the Sochi Olympics is the product of the joint effort of USC Annenberg and the U.S. Olympic Committee.
"The USOC can be just as committed to helping American journalists succeed as they are to helping American athletes succeed," said Abrahamson. "It takes a great deal of time, effort and understanding on everyone's part to have student journalists covering the Olympic Games. They're going to be working incredibly long hours for 17 straight days, but this will truly be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."
According to Abrahamson, opportunities like these best position students for jobs in the real world."I've worked at Annenberg for three years now, and we're doing some crazy exciting stuff," he said. "We prepare our young people to walk into the work-a-day world and kill it. We prepare them to excel from the moment they get their diploma."
Long before he was an Olympic reporter, Abrahamson, a Dayton, Ohio, native and Northwestern University graduate, found his interest in sports sparked by the 1972 Munich Games.
"I've loved the Olympics ever since I was a little boy," said Abrahamson. "I grew up following basketball and football, and the Olympics opened my eyes to other kinds of sports and athletes like Jesse Owens and other people who became my childhood heroes."
Abrahamson currently teaches graduate-level sports journalism at USC Annenberg—Advanced Sports Writing in the fall, and Sports and Society in the spring—and also helps to direct the USC Annenberg Institute of Sports, Media & Society (AISMS) with Annenberg Clinical Professor Daniel Durbin.
"Professor Durbin and I believe that this institute is one of the truly novel initiatives in the U.S.," said Abrahamson of AISMS. "It has the potential to become a major force in the way sports are viewed and in original sports programming, and he and I are super excited to see where this can take us."
As for much-talked about political issues surrounding the upcoming Sochi Olympics, Abrahamson has seen controversies leading up to the Games before – and said most everything has a way of fading away as soon as the opening ceremony begins.
"The Olympics are usually marked by all manner of controversy," said Abrahamson. "But once the sport itself starts, the focus almost always shifts to the athletes themselves and their stories."
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