Young Reporters Program, the chance of life! (click here to original article within the AIPS Magazine)
This summer I lived the most important experience of my whole green journalist's career: thanks to AIPS, AIPS Europe, UEFA and Israel Football Association (IFA) as a young reporter I took part to the UEFA Euro U21 in Israel in june, 5th-19th. I was born in Argentina, one of the country that most loves football, 25 years ago, but I soon moved to Italy, another country with such a strong feeling with the most popular sport in the world. I finished my master's degree in Sport Journalism in the School of Journalism of the "Università Statale degli Studi di Milano" and I have had the occasion to become part of the AIPS delegation in Tel Aviv. We, 13 journalist from 18 to 25 years coming from all the continents were the "lucky people". This experience changed my life and I will never stop to thank the AIPS to provided us such a great opportunity to learn, and to live the real and professional meaning of being international sport journalist.
Tel Aviv: our "football Promise Land"
The 3rd YR's Program was held during an high level international football tournament, the second time after the YR's Program organized in Baku during the World Cup FIFA U-16. For the first time Israel has hosted a sporting event of this magnitude and thanks to UEFA we were there. Together with IFA they provided us not only the hospitality in the magnificent Leonardo City Tower Hotel in the district of Ramat Gan, but also the accreditations to all the matches in the four marvelous stadiums between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv (Bloomfield, Teddy, Ha Moshava and Netanya), and the visits to the local media as Sport 5 Channel, to Yedioth Ahronoth, the most widely circulated paper in Israel since 1970 but also to the IFA Academy, to the Peres Center for the Peace and to the old Jerusalem as well as to Nazareth and to the the Galilee's Sea. Our association has reached during this weeks the most ambitious goal that one could have thought: a real "school of journalism" on the field. Share our ideas was the first point of the day, starting from the young reporters brain-storming and using feedbacks of our mentors, the production of articles and videos and has been successful. Several young reporters stories were taken up by the from national media: from the pictures of norwegian footballers surfing in the beach taken by Thomas (YR Norway) to the funny side of the spanish players presented by Marta (YR Spain) or to the curious story of Orr Barrouch, the Israel striker chosen for the team thanks to the internet that I discover talking with an israel journalist. AIPS, UEFA and IFA provided us the occasion to meet several top level expert: Michael Platini speak to us during the delivery of our diplomas. "Football is something that should be good to everyone, I think both the Israeli and the Palestinian children should play football together", he said. In the list of the important speakers that we've listens to there was also Hugh Dallas (UEFA Referee), Thomas Giordano (UEFA Spokesman), Pierre Cornu (CIES Senior Consellor), Michael Nees (IFA Technical Director) and Amir Ephrat (IFA Spokesman), Kevin Ashby (Editorial Manager UEFA.Com) and Josh Hirshman , Uri Sheradsky (founder of Hapoel Katamon FC), Ronit Glasman (Israel 2013 Marketing Director).
"Sport has changed"
"You have to cover this different story in a different way", Noah Klieger, the AIPS Basketball Commission Chairman, has received us in his newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth in the centre of Tel Aviv and gave us a lesson of passion for our job from his huge experience, he's 87 and he's still writing and providing stories to his public. As he said "Sport has changed, you have to cover this different story in a different way": that's way what we have tried to do during the program. Working side by side under the guide of our great mentors, an equip of professional sport journalists, we've managed to produce our own contents trying always to find something new and doing it with quality and speed, exploiting the full potential of the modern multi-skill kind of journalist that this program required us to become. A new story, an original tv-production, sometimes also "competing with" (but much often trying to learn the secrets by) the senior journalist that are covering the UEFA Euro U21 were our focuses. If I have to be honest I think that just an experience like this can give you the exact idea of your value: you can do mistakes - as repeating 23 times your first stand up with your patient mentor waiting for the good one…, you can fail one or twice or several times, but if you want to become a top sport journalist before or later your real value will come out from your infinite passion and from your tenacity.
Journalism, a way to feel the world.
For the majority of us this was the first time we've been in Israel: we found a country really hospitable and excited for hosting such a great sport event as the UEFA U21 european competition. Sport in its different meaning is high considered in Israel, from basketball to football the importance of the competition and of the team's strength is a key value of israeli culture, for what we were able to taste. In the host U21 team hebrew and arab footballers use to play together without any tension, just cooperating to become, as a team, the real "stars of tomorrow", as UEFA slogan for this youth competition says. During the hard work that we've faced, starting from the early morning with our first meeting until the late night, coming to the hotel from the stadiums and still working on the bus to finish our articles or our video-editing the rhythm of a city that seems not to sleep has become our rhythm. As well as the taste of hummus, the color of vegetables and the fragrance of kebab has become familiar day by day. As journalist we couldn't forget, even covering a sport event, the historical and political sensitive environment in which Israel is situated: every occasion to meet local people was important for us to listen stories, positions and points of view. After the great job we've done, thanking to the mentors, to the associations and to all the people we've met in Israel we are now better journalist than before. We know how it works in such a high level event, we are prepared to do the job much more than before. With more skills, but also with more and more passion. Journalism is not just a job, it's a way to feel the world. And we want to feel it with the same passion and the same awareness that the spanish young footballer showed us during the final match against Italy, raising their EURO U21 cup.
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