When I interview basketballers after practices and games, my quotes are posted immediately on the Olympic news wire, INFO2008, an intranet information system for the Beijing Olympic Games and the primary outlet for all ONS information and reports. From there, all accredited Journalists from around the world can legally shoplift my quotes to enhance their stories.

After Australia prevailed against Russia, for example, I interviewed Andrew Bogut in the mixed zone (the tunnel) as he came off the floor. The information I skillfully provoked and its context were plugged in here.

Criticized after opening qualifying play with a pair of lackluster losses, Bogut and the Aussies came back in a big way, with Bogut scoring 22 points to lead Australia over the 2007 EuroBasket champs.

"A lot of people have doubted us along the way," Bogut said. "No one believes in us but us."

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"Individual performance means nothing in the Olympic Games," said Bogut, whose 8-of-13 shooting included a pair of 3-pointers and who added a team-high eight rebounds as well as two assists and a steal. "We simply learned from two bad games," he added. "It was a great game for me, but the most important thing is that we're going to the next round of the Olympics."

The immediacy with which news diffuses from the Olympics is astonishing. Flash-quote reporters literally run from the mixed zone to computers to submit the content they've gathered. Therefore, within minutes of a match's conclusion, thoughts and reactions from participants become available. There is no news cycle during the Olympics, rather a constant, unclotted gush of information spewing from every Olympic orifice. Essentially, the Olympic News Service functions like the AP or Reuters of the Olympics, an international news agency through a central editorial team.

Instantaneous access to Olympic news is a great service to journalists and broadcasters in Beijing, but also allows the Olympic machine to spin its own wheels and dominate international news for nearly a month. It's accessibility purveys its popularity and vice versa. News consumers in every time zone crave Olympic news, and the ONS are the primary enablers. Who sets the news agenda though? Is it the consumers who can't get enough of everything Olympic, or the news agencies who make Olympic news front page news? The chicken, or the egg?

Either way, it's been invigorating on the ground floor.