Press Anticipates USOC Decision on a 2024 Bid City -- Media Watch

(ATR)The United States Olympic Committee is expected to announce its selection of a city to bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics on Thursday.

Boston; Los Angeles; San Francisco and Washington, D.C. are all vying to bid for the Games.

New York Times reporters John Branch, Brooke Barnes, Jennifer Steinhauer and Katharine Q. Seelye, break down each U.S. city's proposed bids for the 2024 Olympics.

"The USOC seems ready to bid for the 2024 Summer Games," the columnists say, "but the hard part is deciding which of the four finalists has the best chance of being chosen by the IOC."

Greg Hinz, a columnist for the weekly newspaper Crain's Chicago Business, says officials behind Chicago's failed bid for the 2016 Olympic Games are watching the 2024 bid race with a "mixture of sorrow, envy and maybe a tinge of anger."

Chris Dempsey and Liam Kerr, co-chairmen of the opposition group "No Boston Olympics," say Boston wins if the USOC does not choose it to bid for the 2024 Games.

"Should Boston's bid advance, it will do so without any established guidelines for a public process." Dempsey and Kerr add,"Massachusetts faces enormous challenges in the next decade, among them building more affordable housing, closing the education achievement gap, and fixing our transportation infrastructure.

"Boston 2024's bid threatens to divert resources and attention away from these challenges."

Jonathan Lloyd, an editor NBC's affiliate station in southern California, takes a closer look at LA's bid proposal for the 2024 Olympics.

"For Los Angeles, it's a case of been there, done that," Lloyd says. "LA Mayor Eric Garcetti has teamed with agent Casey Wasserman to push for LA's third Olympics by promoting past successes, improvements to venues, new venues and an expanding transportation system."

San Francisco Chronicle reporter John Cote discusses tweaks made to San Francisco's 2024 bid proposal on Wednesday, the eve of the USOC's decision.

"Organizers have added a plan to stage the opening and closing ceremonies for the Games--and track-and-field events--at a hoped-for new stadium in Oakland," Cote says.

Elliot Almond and Mark Emmons, writers for California's San Jose Mercury News, explore whether hosting the 2024 Olympic Games would be worth it for the Bay Area.

"The Olympics would further elevate San Francisco's standing among the world's great cities, bid organizers say, and would fast-track public projects that would benefit Bay Area residents for decades."

Dave Zirin, sports editor forThe Nation, and Jules Boykoff,Olympian and professor at Pacific University in Oregon,discuss why they thinkall opponents of "gentrification and police militarization" should oppose Washington, D.C.'s proposed bid for the 2024 Games.

Zirin and Boykoff say, "The Olympic Games--time and again, according to a slew of academic research--have revealed themselves to be defined by debt, displacement and the militarization of public space alongside attendant spikes in police brutality.

"For Washington, D.C.,a city already experiencing gentrification at gunpoint, with a conspicuously parked police van for every new bistro in town, the prospect of hosting the Olympics should be terrifying."

Kriston Capps, writer for The Atlantic's digital branch CityLab.com, explains why he thinks D.C. better hope it wins the U.S. Olympic bid.

"The city is already hell-bent on pursuing the biggest downside of hosting the games: publicly financed stadiums," Capps says. "At least an Olympic bid would require the city to invest in matching transit and infrastructure upgrades and affordable-housing commitments."

Compiled byNicole Bennett

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