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By Deborah Carl
Newsweek Says LDS Church is Using Olympics as Marketing Tool
SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH -- The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints is using the Olympics as a marketing tool says Newsweek in an
article in its May 10th issue. But, it says that Church officials
plan on using the Games as a public-relations opportunity and not a
proselytizing mission. Michael Otterson, the church's chief spokesman
and member of its Olympics coordination committee says the
fundamental goals are to be good hosts and correct misperceptions
about the church and people of Utah.
Steve Pace, a Salt Lake health-care consultant and lapsed member of
the church, criticizes the church's role in the Olympics. "Almost
everything that happens in Utah usually has a church spin on it. And
the church has never been able to do anything with a small bit of a
light touch."
The church beat most of the Olympic sponsors in providing information
packets to the media. Also, during the Olympics, the church will have
its own media center and will present programs in its new 21,000-seat
Conference Center, a building seven times the size of New York's
Metropolitan Opera House.
The church has pledged $5 million in cash, the temporary use of 160
acres for Olympic parking lots, 16 more acres to help build roads and
a prime block of downtown Salt Lake City to be used for the nightly
medals ceremony. "I go for help," Mitt Romney, head of the Salt Lake
Olympic Committee, says of SLOC's relationship with the church. And
sometimes the church says no. For instance, it declined to share its
vast pool of translators with SLOC, reserving them instead for
tourists set to swarm Temple Square.
Source:
'The Mo-lympics'
Newsweek 10May01 S1
By Jay Weiner
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