Fran Turkowitz

Welcome to the Olympics! If you're one of the 20,000+ journalists covering the games, you've probably arrived. But boy, it hasn't been easy getting there. Over the past week, The Observer spoke to reporters and editors about their headaches getting credentials in Beijing.

"One day, they’ll e-mail us and ask for certain information and the next day, after we raised a question as to why, then it changes," said Tom Jolly, The New York Times sports editor. "This is mostly silly stuff—like requests for photos for credentials because there was a blue background instead of a white background. That literally happened."

"I think the biggest problem is set from the language barrier," said Fran Turkowitz, the assistant to the Times' sports department who's in charge of credentialing.  read more »