The Twitter-lympics

A SERIOUS well done to the Evening Standard for last night’s issue. It was the first paper I saw to run a spread of pictures posted on Twitter by athletes at the London Olympics. Not a sarcastic well done, a genuine well done. It’s a well done not because I’m that interested in how mucky Rebecca Adlington’s Olympic village room is – but because it’s one in the eye for ‘the rules’, isn’t it?

Only last week, I was reading how newspapers were not allowed to run any pictures taken by visitors to the Olympics OR any photos passed on by athletes or even ones they might upload to Twitter. P’ah to that, the Standard joyously declared the Twitter-lympics open last night. I don’t want to be nicked by the Olympic cops so I’ve greyed out the pics above, but they did a good job. The rules are detailed on this Press Gazette blog.

As you can see, the New Journal would be banned from using a picture that might have been taken at an event from somebody from Camden, even if there was a valid, nice story to it… say a 1948 Olympian was marking the return of the Games to London with a visit to some weight-lifting. Seems a bit OTT.