On Thursday October 15, the SOCOG Press Operations Team visited the University to brief student media volunteers on their projected part in Press Operations for the Sydney 2000 Olympics.
The team, headed by notable broadcast journalist Richard Palfreyman, and including Sue Graham (Co-ordinator, Press Operations), Gary Kemper (Photographics) and Steve Dettre (Event Results/Information), presented an overview of planned media coverage of the games to some forty UOW Communication Studies students who have committed themselves to the media volunteer program.
The University of Wollongong is one of only eight universities selected by SOCOG to be involved in this program, the selection being based on the operation of appropriate communication and media studies courses in the institutions. The UOW was seen by the Team to be particularly well placed in terms of these criteria.
Volunteers are to be engaged during the Games in a wide variety of activities in support of the extensive press coverage - anticipated to involve the largest concentration of media personnel ever in Australia and one of the largest the world has seen, using state-of-the-art newsgathering technology.
Student volunteers will be attached to teams of professional journalists providing facilities, services and information for the visiting Press Corps at the Main Press Centre or one of the Venue Press Centres directly covering competition in the twenty-eight Olympic sports.
Volunteers will be involved in supporting reportage, recording, collation, processing and transmission of information about not only the sporting events themselves but also other newsworthy activities related to the Games.
"The knowkedge, skills and experience student volunteers will gain will be invaluable both for their further studies and, of course, vocationally, and the benefits will also accrue to the University itself", says Maurie Scott of the CCS Program, Facuty of Arts.
"The Media Volunteer Program has planned to provide a progressively intensive training regime to prepare participants for their tasks by the year 2000 but, complementary to this, contibuting Universities will be encouraged to orientate segments of their communications and media studies work toward the special requirements of the news coverge of the Olympics."
"In this way, the Communication and Cultural Studies Program at UOW plans to adapt segments of its 200/300 level print publishing, electronic publishing and television studies subjects to this end."
It promises to be a great event, and it is a compliment to the University that it will be integral to it through the Media Volunteer Program.