The International Olympic Committee's new-media director says the ban on Net reporters may be lifted.

The International Olympic Committee is mulling an Olympic milestone: giving dot-com sports journalists media credentials to cover the Winter Games in 2002. "The Web sites covering sports are coming of age," said Franklin Servan-Schreiber, director of new media for the IOC. "We're considering a new policy for Salt Lake City [site of the Winter Olympics] to allow the dot-coms into the Games." The Internet media community has been fuming over the fact that it continues to be shut out of covering the Olympics. In Sydney, 21,000 media credentials will go out to a bevy of international journalists from the major wire services, TV and radio news operations, newspapers and magazines. But not one will go to a Net journo. Most sports sites have gotten around this barrier by hiring credentialed stringers, or by hanging around outside the venues or in the Olympic Village in the hope of coming away with a quote or two from an athlete. Other, luckier ones have been piggybacked in by their established media parents. For instance, CNNSI.com reporters have been known to use credentials given to Sports Illustrated. And Quokka Sports (QKKA), through a venture with NBC, is getting access to the athletes and events in Sydney through that network. As the exclusive TV broadcaster of the Games for the U.S., NBC has a bushel of credentials. Reporters from the New York Times (NYT) and Los Angeles Times, naturally, can simply write stories that go up on the Web site as well as on their newspapers' sports pages.