Maybe I'm doing too much work

I spend much of the time at venues standing in what is called the mixed zone. As explained in the last blog post, the mixed zone is an area just outside the field of competition where press and broadcast media can interview the athletes when they finish their runs.  Athletes make their way through the corral, starting with the television stations and eventually working their way to the print media. The US athletes, and many of the other larger countries, have people who help guide the athletes through.

But this post isn’t about the athletes, it’s more about the fellow media members who inhabit the mixed zone.

I’ve spent a lot of time with Matt Pepin from the Boston Globe, as we’ve been at a lot of the same events over the first few weeks. He is here as part of a four-person team covering the Olympics and while I haven’t had tons of time to keep up with what’s going on back home, I have read a few of his stories.

At most of the events I’ve been to, there’s been a writer from Sports Illustrated, along with AP writers. And usually there’s a USA Today writer and most of the events include writers from many different publications..

What I find most interesting in all of this is there is often two writers from the same publication in the same mixed zone. At the alpine race the other day, there were two USA Today writers doing interviews.

Does that mean that none of the writers can write more than one story? Or two stories? If so, it seems like I could use one of those jobs. One or two stories a day would be a dream come true. Yesterday alone I wrote 11 stories. And a column. So I guess maybe I’m working too much. Maybe it’s time to take a break and only write one story today.

Then again, there’s papers to fill, so that’s highly unlikely.

Lindsey Vonn speaks in the mixed zone after her Super-G race.

UPDATE: I spoke with a person with USA Today credentials today. He noted that many of the people with US Today credentials are employees of papers USA Today's owners own. For instance, he is from a Memphis paper but was there filing stories for local papers in a few different communities around the country.