The Thomson Reuters int'l news service will be processing most of its Olympic news images nearly 5,000 miles away from Rio de Janeiro -- from a nondescript office building in suburban Washington, D.C. The move marks an evolution in how the news wires handle images from a big event like the Olympics -- in the past, all photographers and editors would be on site at the event.
But in a sign of just how far the news business has matured from the days of processing photos in darkrooms, Reuters has flown scores of editors and photo processors from around the world to Alexandria, Va., to handle the Olympics. “Advanced technology allows photos to be sent directly from our photographers’ cameras almost instantly to our proprietary systems called Paneikon, where photos are picked up, edited and transmitted to the wire in close to real time,” a Reuters PR exec said via email.
In its Olympics coverage guide, Reuters says that the first photos from the medal events will be delivered within 3-5 minutes, with between 2,000 and 3,000 images being delivered each day. “All of the events will be edited in real time,” the guide says.
In addition to the team of editors and processors in Virginia, Reuters also has photo editors in markets like Toronto, Poland, Berlin, Singapore and Sydney.
