Sports journalism is important to both news consumers and to newsrooms. Rooting for a team or an athlete allows us to experience stories of winning and losing that we can share with our neighbors. Sports is a window to the broader world and sometimes to ourselves and our own communities.
Even though the Winter Olympics, which just concluded, took place on another continent, our local newsrooms each had to determine if and how they could incorporate those stories into their local offerings.
One local TV station news director said that based on their ratings, Hoosiers loved watching the games. So what can we learn from the choices local newsrooms made about covering the Olympics?
To examine this question, I interviewed local broadcast news directors, IndyStar’s executive editor, a local anchor at the 2026 Winter Olympics, a Paralympic athlete and his mom. They each offered me insight on how local news outlets serve the community when they cover elite competition.
At global sporting events, media conglomerates facilitate local coverage
Media conglomerates have faced criticism for disproportionately shaping news coverage to favor national stories at the expense of local reporting, thereby reducing the attention, resources and coverage dedicated to informing audiences about events and issues in their own communities. Olympics coverage, in this case, is an exception to that criticism. Local news outlets owned or connected to larger companies benefit from the resources and technology those conglomerates provide.
In Indianapolis, the IndyStar is a part of the USA TODAY Network. Broadcast and media company TEGNA owns WTHR and is also the largest independent owner of NBC-affiliated stations. FOX59 and CBS4 are both part of the Nexstar Media Group.
Sending a news crew to the Olympics requires considerable planning and investment, including credentialing through the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee, international travel, lodging and coverage logistics. It’s an expense that is out of reach for most local newsrooms.
“As part of the USA TODAY Network, we have an extended team of reporters in Milan,” said Ryan Martin, executive editor of the IndyStar. “Which allows us to provide our audience with comprehensive on-site reporting from experienced journalists, while ensuring our Indianapolis newsroom remains focused on the local reporting that only we can provide.” Ryan added that international travel is still possible for the staff at the IndyStar, when a local story calls for it.
Over the years, the IndyStar has covered multiple Olympic and international sporting events, both by sending its own staff and by developing sources that allow journalists to tell unique stories from a distance. For the 2026 Winter Olympics, the Star featured Fort Wayne resident and freestyle skiing athlete Nick Goepper. They made sure to let their readers know when he was competing. And they documented his journey from qualifying to competition in several photo galleries. The images were captured by a combination of USA TODAY Sports, Getty Images, Reuters and U.S. Ski and Snowboard photographers. Martin said in an email that the newspaper’s Olympic strategy emphasizes local relevance, by taking advantage of the resources USA TODAY Network has reporting on the ground in Italy.
“When covering local athletes in national and international competitions, our focus is on what their journeys mean here at home,” Martin said.
Local athletes see the value of local coverage
Paralympic athlete Noah Malone still remembers what it was like to have the hometown spotlight shine on him. Locally, he’s been featured on WTHR, WISH-TV, Inside INdiana Business, and in the IndyStar. At the national level, NBC Sports, Team USA and U.S. Para Track and Field, have covered his story.
“I’ve had quite a few local news outlets cover me since about 2017,” Malone said. “My first ever article that was written about me was by David Woods with the IndyStar. Ever since then the IndyStar has been very prominent in covering myself as an athlete and also along my Paralympic journey.”
Local coverage of track and field helps his sport gain recognition, Malone said. Many of those events — especially the field events — don’t get much coverage in the Summer Games. “When I was younger, having support of local media was huge,” he said. “It allowed me to share my story to everyone. It allowed me to become more of a confident athlete and help me become the person I am today.”
Connecting to reporters on the ground in Milan
Localizing coverage may be an obvious strategy to win over Indy audiences, but it takes careful coordination, planning, and agility to pull it off. Nexstar Media Group has several regional facilities across the country, including one in Indianapolis, that allows them to transmit live broadcasts from reporters in Italy to FOX59 and CBS4 anchors here at home. The Nexstar reporter in Italy spent five hours every day, starting at 5 a.m., doing a new live shot every five minutes for stations across America. Between the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, the reporter compiled hundreds and hundreds of two-way interviews, CJ Hoyt, news director at FOX59 and CBS4, said.
From the Nexstar facility in Indianapolis, which they call a bunker, a production team member dials in the reporters in Italy and connects them to local anchors at FOX59 and CBS4. This makes a live conversation possible. Without this technology, anchors read a live introduction before a pre-recorded interview to give the coverage a local flavor.
Although many of us bemoan the fact that large media companies own much of the local media landscape, being connected to big corporations is ideal for covering a massive event like the Olympics.
“It’s why you’re seeing companies get larger, because it will enable them to provide a broader amount of coverage than an individual station alone is able to provide,” said FOX59’s Hoyt. “And it has been hugely beneficial to us to be able to be part of that because we would not be getting custom content from Italy. We would not be making the choice as a non-NBC affiliate to commit resources to two weeks in Italy.”
NBCUniversal holds the exclusive U.S. broadcast rights to the Olympics through 2036. That means the local NBC affiliate, WTHR, gets priority access to all the significant media opportunities of the Games. WTHR News Director Cyndee Hebert said the station’s strategy is to celebrate Hoosier athletes on the world stage and utilize WTHR talent whenever possible.
“Our goal is to win in the ratings race — Indiana residents love watching the Olympics and our ratings show it,” she said. “Our streaming content is also attracting big audiences.”
WTHR anchor Anne Marie Tiernon has covered the Olympics in Beijing, Vancouver, London, Sochi, Rio, Paris and now Milan-Cortina. Tiernon told me each Olympics is unique. Typically, more Indiana athletes participate in the Summer Games than the Winter Games because we have strong swimming, diving and basketball programs here. As a result, reporting on the Summer Games is also more intense. Journalists follow local athletes as they compete for a spot on Team USA, as well as during the Games from preliminary to medal rounds, she said.
In Italy, the TEGNA team had daily conversations about which stories to follow. Those discussions included athletes’ performances, the logistics of covering multiple Olympic venues at some distance, trending storylines, and how viewers were responding to the coverage. WTHR also followed Hoosier athletes, Goepper, and bobsledder Jadin O’Brien, a University of Notre Dame graduate and Wisconsin native.
“In both Summer and Winter Olympics, we also look for physical therapists, business people, massage therapists — other Hoosiers who travel to the Games to support athletes,” Tiernon said.
River Sturdivant, mother of Paralympic sprinter Noah Malone, sees another advantage. When the local news covers her son, his accomplishments become community wins. She said coverage has helped expand what the community understands about elite athletics, including who should be considered an Olympian.
“It creates representation and possibility for young people with disabilities, increases awareness about adaptive and Paralympic sport pathways, and normalizes disability as part of everyday community life rather than something separate,” she said.
It’s not an easy assignment
Tiernon provided live shots and reporting to other local stations across the country owned by TEGNA, in addition to serving the Indianapolis audience.
“Because of the time difference, many of those reports air in the morning newscasts starting at 5 a.m. on the East Coast and continue live hits through 9 a.m. PST with our West Coast affiliates,” she said. “It’s energizing to connect with our stations – from Bangor to Boise – and hear the excitement and interest in the Games from our anchors and viewers across the country.”
The TEGNA crew in Italy provided nearly 1,000 live shots throughout the Games.
With the innovation of on-demand streaming platforms, TV news stations have launched their apps for Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire, called connected TV apps. Local stations manage their own streaming apps, sometimes choosing to include stories produced by their parent company.Tiernon served as the national anchor for a new daily weekday streaming show called “Beyond the Podium,” produced by the TEGNA Olympic team in Milan. WTHR also prioritized meeting viewers where they are by creating video content for mobile and social platforms.
Nexstar produced 34 separate unique connected TV shows, roughly 300 original stories leading up to and during the Olympics, totaling about 67 hours of original programming, which FOX59 and CBS4 took advantage of in their coverage. Nexstar provides this type of content to all of its stations.
Even though covering the Olympics takes some resources and extra attention, the effort serves news consumers here in Indianapolis. After all, sports have the power to bring us closer together. Athletic competition is like a war where nobody dies in the end and the losers rise again to fight another day. We need more triumphant stories that inspire hope; we’re fortunate to have this variety of coverage in Indianapolis.
Next up in big sporting events: The Indy500, which FOX59 has been planning
since the waving of the checkered flag in 2025.
Tracey Compton is Poynter’s Indianapolis Public Editor. You can reach her at indypubliceditor@poynter.org.
The Indy Public Editor is a grant-funded pilot project run by the Poynter Institute. This column is edited by Kelly McBride and copy edited by Lauren Klinger. The project is managed by Nicole Slaughter Graham with support from Amaris Castillo.
Mirror Indy publishes the Indianapolis public editor columns as part of a partnership with Poynter Institute to increase media literacy and trust in local journalism.