The Washington Post today announced robust coverage plans for the 2018 Olympic Winter Games. Readers can enjoy live on-the-ground reporting from sports reporters and columnists, and international correspondents. In addition to The Post’s in-depth reporting and analysis, readers will have the opportunity to engage with several new elements added to The Post’s Olympics coverage, including an augmented reality game, daily newsletter and a blog sharing first-person accounts from a rookie Olympics reporter:
- Augmented reality game: On The Post’s classic app, readers can compare the speeds of athletes from nine Winter Olympic sports by watching races on a 3D track projected into their location. They can see a skier challenge a bobsledder, for instance, or a luger take on a hockey player. The experience begins with a short quiz that demonstrates the concept. Readers will choose winners of three pre-selected matchups and will watch the races to see if they guessed correctly. After that, they can create their own matchups and watch the races. The data used within the AR experience was collected by Post reporters from recent championship results and other sport-specific reports. The experience works best on Apple devices because of Apple’s ARKit technology, which was introduced with iOS 11 and is now available for hundreds of millions of iPhone and iPad users. Users can access the game starting Monday, Feb. 5.
- Daily Newsletter: Anchored by Washington Post contributor and experienced Olympics journalist Tik Root, The Post’s Olympics newsletter will be delivered each morning at 11 a.m. EST starting Thursday, Feb. 8 and will provide readers with game recaps and previews to what’s coming up that night. Readers can subscribe here.
- First-person accounts from a rookie Olympics reporter: Sports reporter Chelsea Janes will contribute daily to The Post’s Sports blog where she will detail her experience as a reporter covering her first Olympic games. Articles will detail behind-the-scenes experiences that stuck out most to Janes that the average reader may not know about the Olympics (ex. speed skating is South Korea’s favorite sport and what it’s like watching the Super Bowl from PyeongChang).
Following the debut of The Post’s artificial intelligence technology at the 2016 Rio Olympics, the sports staff will again utilize automated storytelling to generate short multi-sentence updates for readers on medal wins for all events, total medal tally with an updated graphic twice per day and event reminders five minutes before events between 6 a.m. to 12 a.m. EST. Readers can find updates on Twitter at @WPOlyBot and @PostSports.
For the latest updates, readers can follow The Post’s Rick Maese, Barry Svrluga, Liz Clarke, Chuck Culpepper, Jerry Brewer, Adam Kilgore, Chelsea Janes, Anna Fifield and Chico Harlan, or visit www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/.