Why the French love their sporting heroes – and their newspapers

THE French love their sporting heroes – even if they have to borrow them, a la David Beckham.

The 37-year-old (really?) former England captain played just 16 minutes as a substitute for Paris St-Germain in their 2-0 win over championship rivals Marseille last night but made the front pages of the papers sporting, national and regional.
The reports were gushing, praising Beckham for his part in Ibrahimovic’s added time second goal, and even drawing a cartoon in L’Equipe, still France’s best-selling national paper by a mile, sorry kilometre, despite steep losses lately.

The French love their newspapers too. The gentleman above couldn’t wait to get out of the shop to read his. And it was interesting to see the regional daily Charente Libre, published in Angouleme, 260 miles south-west of Paris carrying a picture of Beckham as its front page image.
That’s like the Newcastle Chronicle running a Manchester United story on its front, a laughable suggestion. But such is the star power of Beckham that he transcends national and regional differences.
I was surprised to see renowned newspaper guru Juan Antonio Giner have a pop at L’Equipe branding it as ‘not a very good design’ with ‘not a very good future’. It still sells more than twice both national dailies Liberation and Les Echos and provides the sports fan with a daily dose of everything that moves.

Oh, that a publisher in the UK could find a way to sell 200,000 plus copies a day of a sports paper, even given that the Wonderful World of the Internet is supposed to provide everything to all men. For information, interviews, comment and reflection L’Equipe is hard to beat. 

The argument has long been that’s what the UK national papers do in with increasing volume and competence and a sports paper would not work. Maybe not, but it would still be fun to try…
FOOTNOTE: L’Equipe also has an 88-page colour magazine free at the weekend. This week’s issue featured an interview with everywhere-man Will Carling. Didn’t see, though, that he was next up on Danny Baker’s Saturday morning Sausage Sandwich Game on Radio 5 Live.

The Victoria University dream: How it all ended in tears

"It's all so unfair, Mr Alan."

It was difficult to disagree with Sandra. We are standing on the rather impressive steps of Victoria University in Kampala. She immaculately turned out as ever, hair and make-up perfect and tailored clothes just so and me, hot and unusually bothered.

"What are you going to do?" I asked, rather lamely, in the hope that she had a grand plan up her sleeve. But, like scores of other students who have had their dreams of an ‘African-based, internationally recognised degree’ dashed Sandra is not really in a position to do much.

She has a family and a business in Uganda and she can't drop everything and resume her studies in Dubai or the UK, alternatives offered by the company that has abruptly called a halt to her course.

Sandra doesn't want to go to a Ugandan university with huge classes and lack of equipment. That's why she worked hard to put herself through Victoria's International Foundation Programme last year and join my Media, Communication and Journalism course in September.

But that looks like being her only option. I mutter a good luck message and we shuffle our separate ways, both close to tears.

There are around 150 Sandras left high and dry by Edulink, the company that owned and ran Victoria University. In a dramatic announcement just days before the new term was due to start staff were told that courses validated by the University of Buckingham in the UK had been suspended.

A statement put out on the Victoria University website set out the reasons behind the move:
“Under both UK and Ugandan law discrimination on a variety of grounds is prohibited; however there are fundamental differences between the two nations’ respective laws regarding equality and diversity, which cannot be reconciled.  
After seeking legal guidance from both UK and Ugandan lawyers, Victoria University and University of Buckingham have concluded that as the laws of Uganda and UK presently stand, Victoria University cannot comply with both sets of laws.”

This is all about the so-called ‘Gay Bill’, which was due to be presented to Parliament early this year. It calls for severe penalties for people who engage in homosexual acts and even threatens punishment for anyone who knows about others who know about any such behaviour.

The bill, however, looks unlikely to make it to be debated let alone onto the statute books and some pundits feel it is more likely a smokescreen while other weightier matters like the future of Uganda with new-found oil wealth are discussed. 

It is not for me to speculate on the whys and wherefores of this decision, but no-one at Buckingham, apart from the deputy vice chancellor Professor Alistair Alcock, appeared to know anything about this move. His somewhat unconvincing interview with the BBC World Service makes uncomfortable viewing.

So, two years hard work unravelled in a matter of days. The students were told they could have a refund for last term’s fees and would be offered help to continue their studies at Middlesex Dubai or Buckingham in the UK while the academic staff were given three days to clear their desks and were paid off as per their contracts.

I rather enjoyed working for a ‘private’ university. It brought the concept of ‘student-centred learning and teaching’ very close to home as without happy and fulfilled students filling the seats and paying the fees there was no university.

And that really is the tragedy of it all. The students were happy. They were proud to belong to the Victoria campus and were the best recruiting sergeant of all, telling friends and family about what a great place it was to study.

And they had no reason to doubt Edulink’s intentions. As the Edulink website says:  “Creating a financially and culturally prosperous society is Edulink's core mission, and if its success to date is any indication, the sky is the limit for this one-of-a-kind organization.”

Unfortunately the sky is not the limit for Sandra, or indeed the committed staff from around world (including me!) who must pick up the pieces too.

Packing up to go wherever next, I remember back to one of our classes where I introduced the students to the dark arts of interviewing. I have shown hundreds of young journalists how to approach people and get them to open up and answer a few simple questions as the basis for a ‘You Say’ vox-pop.

I’ve had students go home, be sick, freeze in fear and pack up and go to the pub rather than tackle the great unknown in the street. Ugandans are not great at direct questions or eye contact so I set the bar quite low at just three interviews each in a 30-minute exercise.

Sandra was first back. She had talked to 20 people, and showed me her notebook complete with comments and more names, ages, occupations etc than even I dared expect for a first exercise.

Both the media in Uganda, with its Government-sponsored claptrap, and higher education sector, with degrees that carry no weight outside the country, are in need of an overhaul. And in a few years’ time Sandra and her classmates would have been in a position to lead a quiet revolution from within.

That dream is now on hold; a tragedy for Sandra, the Victoria University students and staff – and Uganda.

Where happiness is a 2 pence bag of water

It is very hot in Kampala today. Currently 28 degrees with the sun baking down out of a clear sky. Time to get the camera out and see who’s doing what…

THIS BAG of water cost the thirsty customer 100 Ugandan shillings – a little more than 2p in Britain. She is either unwilling or unable to pay 10 times that for a bottle of water.

The bag comes complete with carefully cut straw, which pierces the bag. Just gotta be careful how you carry it…

NATIONAL hero Stephen Kiprotich, the Olympic marathon champion, is everywhere on billboards. ‘Kip Siping’ doesn’t really do it for me, but I think we get the message.

‘A BILLION REASONS TO BELIEVE IN AFRICA. I’m not sure what Coke’s slogan means. It’s also a typographical masterpiece so I guess it’s all in CAPS. This huge truck towing a trailer rattled and rolled along Kira Road delivering glass bottles which will eventually find their way into the thousands of shops, restaurants and roadside kiosks.

THIS girl slogs up the road under an umbrella sunshade. Still looks hard work, though…

“You have to love journalism with all your heart; if you lose the sense of excitement, give up.”

THESE are sadly not my words – I wish they were – but from William Rees-Mogg editor of The Times from 1967-1981 who died just after Christmas.

I hadn’t realised he was so young, just 38 when he became editor (below, right) and only 54 when he switched careers to become chairman of the Arts Council.

His career reminds me that journalism offers a ‘suite of skills’ like no other job. Journalists work fast, are accurate and fearless in dealings with people from all walks of life. No wonder journalists carve out extra careers in politics, education, the arts, charity sector and, whisper it, the dreaded corporate communications.

My concern – as an editor, a journalism educator and a lifelong advocate for the part that journalism plays in holding society together – is that not enough of the right people are coming into journalism and a lot of those that do just don’t stick at it.

Some very good young reporters that I recruited have drifted off into marketing, PR and all that netherworld where no-one cares that you can take down shorthand at 100 words a minute or that your legal and public affairs knowledge will make you everyone’s friend at the pub quiz.

Perhaps I’m just an old romantic for the difference that journalism makes to people’s lives. Whether it’s a phone call to the council to get a street light fixed, reuniting lost-long family and friends or calling the rich and powerful to account what we do does get things done.

But I wonder whether it’s a lack of application from the young journalists or the industry’s failure to provide both more money and a discernible career path. Like a lot of people I swerved around both with some hard work and a bit of luck.

I cut grass and cleaned windows to help supplement my even then meagre newspaper salary, but at no time ever considered giving up to go and do a job that needed no qualification or special skill. And the career path just sort of opened up as I was in the right place at the right time but only after doing some of the stuff that no-one was queuing up for like working at night/holidays/weekend.

I’m embarking on a piece of academic research to see what became of cohorts of NCTJ graduates through the years. My own alma mater (Harlow block release 1975-6) boasts Neil Harman (@NeilHarmanTimes), tennis correspondent of The Times (above, left with you-know-who), and Bob Bird, former editor of the Scottish News of the World.

But what became of the others? My guess is that more are still involved in and around mainstream journalism than from subsequent years.
I know a former journalist, who now works in digital, who wouldn’t help put together a New Year Honours piece because it was the “end of his shift”, not the first time he has pulled out the time card. If that’s what we all become, last one out turn off the lights…

Anyone got a spare room for 50,000 people?

SORRY, folks, I’m back on investigative journalism.

This seven par story is on page 23 of today’s Daily Monitor. It’s pretty well written and has one of my favourite does-what-it-says-on-the tin headlines.

Like in much of rural Uganda 90 per cent of the population of Amuria work in farming, growing crops from sweet potato and cassava to oranges and rice plus looking after animals.

So along come the Zhonghua Exploration and Mineral Development Company and bingo we have ‘mineral exploration’ and 50,000 people looking for a new home.

For local readers that’s more than the number of people who live in Fort Portal and for those in the UK that’s the population of Morecambe or half of Crawley, Eastbourne or Oldham.

Quite where they are going to go no-one knows. A local official is quoted as saying “…nothing is mentioned on how homes within the area will be helped.”

Mining has been big business in Uganda more or less since the settlers arrived 150 years ago so I realise this isn’t a new story, but that doesn’t mean we can’t come at again with an inquiring gaze.

And what is the track record of these mineral developers? What will they leave behind? What does it mean for a district like Amuria to have 50,000 displaced people?

While I’m here in Uganda I am having a go at some proper academic research into the effectiveness – or otherwise – of a ‘Western’ model of journalism in the developing world. This looks to me like a story worth chasing, but already I can feel the newsroom shrugs of indifference…

And in other investigative journalism news….

A standalone picture on the same page has this caption: “Pokot girls having lunch with their luggage at Kalas Girls primary School in Amudat District last week. They refused to go home for holidays for fear of undergoing Female Genital Mutilation”.

‘Nuff said.

“Irreverent, unruly and opinionated”: The lessons Uganda’s media can learn from Lord Leveson

WORKING in Afghanistan just after the fall of the Taliban I called it the ‘Galápagos Islands of Journalism’.

When Charles Darwin visited the remote Pacific islands in 1835 he found the wildlife largely undisturbed by outside influence, and so it was with Afghan journalism. Apart from a bit of help from the invading Russians and some old colonial approaches British the Afghans had just done it their way.

So, it was against this backdrop that I was able to see if all the things I held dear about the theory and practice of journalism made any sense. The lovely people who queued up to be journalists in their newly ‘liberated’ country – mainly poets, sculptors and thinkers from a liberal arts background – enjoyed my robust approach to holding the rich and powerful to account but found it hard to maintain the level of intensity needed to make it all mean something.

Fast forward 10 years and here I am in Uganda trying to make sense of their media landscape, in not altogether dissimilar circumstances. I saw it all writ large yesterday at Makerere University’s Annual Media Convention, where the great and the good tried to make sense of investigative journalism.

 Following the informative and  enlightening keynote address – ‘Investigative Journalism: An Adequate Defence of Human Rights and Good Governance’ – by Dr Monica Chibita from Uganda Christian University in Mukono, veteran editor David Sseppuuya (above) came at it with both barrels.

Launching into his topic – ‘Investigative Journalism on the Ugandan Media Landscape: Are We Doing Enough?’ – he derided the “easy pickings” mentality of journalists who simply make the most out of somebody else’s report. “Where is the initiative?” he asked.

He cited a “newsroom culture of indifference” as one of the reasons for a poor recent record of investigations and bemoaned the obstructive impact of big business, who use their clout as major advertisers to restrict journalists nosing about in their affairs.

'Bored' with corruption

Counsel for defence, in the shape of senior editorial executives from Daily Monitor (motto: Truth Every Day), New Vision (Uganda’s Leading Daily) and The Observer (Taking You Deeper) burrowed further into the current malaise, referring to poor salaries for journalists and the subsequent corruption in the newsroom as companies and organisations pay for favourable coverage.

Buried away in Lord Leveson’s statement on regulating the British press, released yesterday, he said: “There are truly countless examples of great journalism, great investigations and great campaigns. Not that it is necessary or appropriate for the press always to be pursuing serious stories for it to be working in the public interest. 
“Some of its most important functions are to inform, educate and entertain and, when doing so, to be irreverent, unruly and opinionated.”

I’ve spent nearly 40 years being “irreverent, unruly and opinionated” so it’s nice to have his lordship’s blessing. But I can’t help but feel Uganda’s Press might benefit from his words too.

As a student was brave enough to point out to the conference he was “bored” with stories about corruption (see earlier “easy pickings” comment). Me too, and I’ve only been here a few months.

Where are the stories about conservation, the environment, people just doing bad things? Every day I see stories that make me think: What’s going on there?

• The bus that crashed into an elephant in a National Park killing eight people and injuring 45. Figures show Uganda is second only to Ethiopia in the number of road accidents in Africa. It’s a national scandal that slips by unnoticed.

or

• The Army kills 25 ‘suspected poachers’, ironically in the same national park at the bus crash. No arrests, no trials, no questions asked. Is this really happening in a country with aims of ‘First World Status’, according to President Museveni?

My experience of running newspaper investigations in the UK, US, the Caribbean and, yes, even Afghanistan points to the seeds of success being planted at home with a hungry newsroom of motivated journalists.

And that motivation and inspiration comes in many forms, not just money. And there is nothing more motivating than seeing your publication make a difference.

Why these stunning pictures deserve to be seen on the page, not just at an exhibition

I AM A huge champion of photographers, photography and ‘visual journalism’, to use the buzz phrase, as some of my earlier blog posts show.

So it was a thrill to be at the Uganda Press Photo Awards last night to see all the wonderful pictures on display, including the winning entry by Daniel Edyego (above), and also take part in a panel discussion on ‘photojournalism and democracy’.

My fellow panelists were the great and the good of East African photojournalism, passionate about their art and true to the traditions of journalism at the cutting edge of both history and democracy.

But, as I made clear during my opportunities to speak, what a shame that very few of these quality images are ever published. The daily papers are full of people shaking hands, people standing in lines and groups of people standing around someone important.

The news and features images that everyone spoke so warmly and eloquently about – “capturing a moment in time” said awards judge Carl De Souza – and admired at the exhibition just don’t make it onto the page.

The reasons and explanations are many and varied, including:

• The assignment was poor in the first place
• The photographer didn’t get any good shots, either because he didn’t try hard enough or because they were prevented by ‘minders’
• The editors and designers don’t have the imagination and skill to pick and use a good picture
• The editors are under pressure to run certain sorts of pictures of certain sorts of people

There was also some discussion about lack of both equipment and expertise, something I’m here in Uganda to try and change.  At Victoria University we are setting up a professional standard studio newsroom to produce a truly multi-media output of print, broadcast and online.

I will be holding workshops for media professionals and taster days for enthusiasts as well as making our facilities available to people who want to develop their own projects.

We will also set up an online platform where photojournalists – no, let’s just make that anyone – can upload their work to a wider audience.

I have worked with some wonderful photographers around the world and would dearly love to get my hands on the work of some of these guys.

Uganda and Ugandan photographers deserve a better showcase for their work and I hope to help provide it.