The Official Olympic Committee has announced that athletes will be allowed to blog while they are in Beijing. The format of the blogs, though, has not yet been decided.
Under current Olympic rules, athletes, coaches and other team officials are barred from functioning as a “journalist or in any other media capacity” during the games. This rule was initially put in place to protect the rights of the accredited media. The advent of blogs and their popularity, though, could turn the Olympics and Olympic village into a virtual reality show, which is something the Olympic committee wants to avoid by having structured guidelines about blogging in place.
