Running into the thick of things

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afkc, american, château de vincennes, election, expat, france, Francois Hollande, French election, Girl, international, jogging, journalist, kenya, Marathon, paris, paris marathon, place de concorde, running, Socialist, sport, stanley biwott, tra, travel, travel writing

Today, Paris is exploding with events. With the first round of elections only a week away, Nicolas Sarkozy is holding his biggest campaign rally yet at the place de Concorde. On the same métro line, but on the other side of the city, Socialist presidential hopeful François Hollande is holding his own rally at the château de Vincennes. And, if that wasn’t enough… let’s add in the 36th annual PARIS MARATHON on the very same day.

It’s wild!

So, I did what I often do in cases such as these… I decided to run right into the thick of it.  Literally.

I am an avid runner and running gives me a special view of the city. On my early morning runs during the week, I see a different side of Paris then in the daylight: workers cleaning up the trash left by tourists at the most-well known sites or prostitutes leaving chic hotels.

But on the weekends, I usually sleep in and run later. This has advantages (sleep is good, plus I, too, get to revel in Paris’ top sites in the sunshine) and disadvantages (I have to dodge the hordes of Japanese, Chinese and American tourists milling around the streets).

Still, whether running during the week or on the weekend, both keep me up to date with Paris’ doings. And like I said, Paris is doing a lot on today.

Funnily enough, still groggy, I had forgotten about all of the events scheduled for this spring Sunday, but I hadn’t been running for long when I heard cheers and saw French flags waving.

Two minutes later, I found myself running next to, but in the opposite direction of, the colorful stream of international marathoners. The atmosphere was fantastic. People lined the streets, shouting encouragements and waving flags. Pretending they were cheering for me, I continued on my course will a new burst of speed.

A few minutes later, I looked up, and who should I see ahead of me but an enormous Nicolas Sarkozy. He was frozen on an giant screen dominating one side of Paris’ central place de Concorde. I skirted the place and the masses of French conservatives I knew would be gathered there, but that didn’t stop me from seeing police barriers and waiting security getting ready for the event and the 80,000 people expected to show up.

I might be a long distance runner, but I didn’t make it all the way out to the château de Vincennes and Hollande’s huge rally on my Sunday run. Too bad, because the atmosphere was supposed to be really festive with a huge organized picnic and the Caribbean rhythms of zouk singer Jacob Desvarieux. I would have loved to run in beat.

Instead, while Paris buzzes, I returned home post-run to spend a chill day catching up. Cozy at home, I don’t feel left out because I most definitely got a taste of the excitement this morning.

I don’t profess that my run was anywhere near the standard of Kenyan Stanley Biwott, who finished this morning’s marathon in a little over two hours, or Ethiopian Tirfi Beyene, who set a record for the women. But hey, it was great all the same.

Translating your resumé

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abroad, american, application, culture, cv, english, expat, france, french, journalism, journalist, language, le figaro, le figaro in english, profession, professional, resume, working

I happen to sit right next to the people who review internship applications for Le Figaro‘s community management service.

A few weeks ago, I was surprised to hear a co-worker say “No photo? Never mind then” and toss an internship application aside.

Here is one major difference between France and Anglophone countries. On a French resume, you list your birthday, your hobbies and you add a photo—none of which we would do on an American resumé, at least to my knowledge.

These “personal” aspects are apparently optional. But judging from those I have talked to, not adding those details is considered seriously shady.

Of course, there are exceptions. Me, for example. When I sent my resumé in to Le Figaro, I didn’t know to add a photo. One of my good friends, another intern at Le Figaro, doesn’t have a photo on his resumé and he still got accepted. But that is also just an exception.

For me, an American, it just feels goofy to add your hobbies on a resumé. Who cares if I dance the salsa or kizomba, like vegetarian cooking and go jogging?

Then again, I suddenly felt really anxious about my hobbies. What if I happen to be applying to work for someone who is a diehard steak fan and decides having a vegetarian on the team would ruin group dinners? Or what if my future employer has an ex-boyfriend who was an international salsa champion and now goes cold with even the slightest strain of a cheery bachata?

On the other hand, maybe my future boss has been dying to share a tofu salad recipe with someone or talk running shoes.

When you are already worried about how your professional experience and page layout, these issues are the last thing you want to worry about in my opinion.

And I don’t even want to begin on the subject of the photo. STRESSFUL. I mean, are we talking glamor shot or passport photo? I have seen both and a little bit of everything in between.

But one other issue that stands out to me is that adding a photo seems like a recipe for discrimination based on apparence. I am absolutely CERTAIN it happens and probably, quite often.

Do you have a resumé in French? What tips do you have to share for other readers about this process?

False friends

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abroad, american, english, france, french, Girl, journalism, journalist, language, language mistakes, le figaro, le figaro in english, Newspaper, newspapers, paris, travel

In French, you call it a faux-ami.

In English, they are “false cognates” or “false friends.”

These are the words that don’t directly translate the way you’d like them to. The infamous one is excited in English and excité in French. The meanings are similar, but in French, excité usually has a sexual connotation.

I can’t tell you how many of my study abroad friends learned the hard way that these words don’t mean the same thing.

I recently had trouble with a difference that is a lot more subtle.

Article works in both French and English, but it is rarely used in a French newsroom. Instead, they say papier (like “paper.”)

I finally trained myself to go with papier instead of article in French. The problem is, if you are speaking French all the time, your English gets funny (For example: I often find myself saying things like “there rests one apple” instead of “there’s one apple left” or “there’s one remaining apple.”)

The other day, I was interviewing a woman in English (which is pretty rare.) I started out by introducing myself and explained I was doing a “paper” on how American expats vote.

Which resulted in her thinking I was a student doing a class project and not a legit journalist.

And try as I might, I could not convince her otherwise. We were talking about voting and she said “Are you old enough to vote, honey?”

It caught me off guard. Quite honestly, I expect people to think that I am younger than I am when I speak French—my voice is higher, my word choice is slightly simpler and the accent makes people think I am an exchange student.

But in English? Hold on a second. That is my native language!

I have to admit that I got just the smallest bit indignant. By the end of the conversation, I think she had accepted that I was out of high school.

College, not so sure.

“So I’ll give you my email address so you can send me the questions for your report,” she said.

“I’ll send you the questions for my article,” I said pointedly.

AFKC carte postale: Where is this view?

The Alliance Française of Kansas City is all over Paris! Who knows where I took this photo? (It is one of my favorite views over Paris and one of the best lunch spots, too, in my opinion!) Guesses?

Did the media keep Merah from his ultimate win?

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Al-Jazeera, extremism, footage, france, international, jihad, killing, le figaro, le figaro in english, media, merah, mohamed merah, news, newspapers, shooting, toulouse

On Monday, the French headquarters of Al-Jazeera received a package containing the footage filmed by Mohamed Merah during his killings in Toulouse and Montauban.

The news service turned over all evidence to police… but remained unsure of what to do with the footage.

As soon as the news got out, responses poured in.

As I wrote in an article for Le Figaro in English:

French president Nicolas Sarkozy asked channels to refrain from broadcasting the grisly images “under any pretext.”

The families of victims also asked Al-Jazeera and any other channel to avoid broadcasting the images. The family of Jonathon Sandler, who was killed alongside his two young sons, spoke out, as did Latifa Ibn Ziaten, the mother of first soldier killed by Merah.

“People want to show it as if it is a film– please, I don’t want to see that,” she begged.

The uncle of Aaron Bijaoui, the teenager seriously wounded by Merah, had said that showing the videos would have allowed Merah to win “all the way to the end.”

In the end, Al-Jazeera decided not to broadcast the images, but the statement made by Aaron’s uncle has stayed with me. This case has been mediatized to its very core and, as a journalist working in France, I haven’t been able to escape it. Our newsroom has barely mentioned anything else since the horrifying shooting outside of a Jewish school was first announced.

On that Monday when Merah slaughtered four people, three of them children, I walked into the newsroom cold, blissfully unaware of the events after a weekend travelling.  It was the first story I wrote of the day and I have been thinking about it since.

Not that I had much time to think about other things: each time a new piece of information appeared, I was writing about it. People hungrily sought out the words written by myself and other journalists—the sorrow of those who knew the victims,  the fears of another attack, the discovery of a suspect, the police closing in…

On Thursday, I was listening in direct as police sieged Merah’s apartment and did a minute by minute coverage. I heard gunshots through my flimsy purple head phones and typed out the time and information and then hit “publish” or “tweet.”  During that time, our readership spiked phenomenally, people subscribed to our tweets and re-tweeted out headlines.

An hour later, it was over. Merah leapt from his balcony in a hail of gunfire and was found dead on the ground below, killed by a bullet fired by a special forces officer just before he slammed into the pavement.

I unplugged my headphones and sat outside in the remarkably beautiful weather. After a tragedy that has ended numerous lives and completely and horrifically changed many others, I can make no special claims to trauma. But I was traumatized, I was emotionally exhausted and I am still traumatized and emotionally exhausted.

That’s terrorism for you.  It’s about provoking as much terror in as many people as you can, including an intern in a big office in Paris who knew no victims and was nowhere near the actual event.  And who can’t remove the images, real or horrifically imagined, from her mind.

All of this has brought up so many questions for me: one being what the role of the media is in all this?

Knowledge is power and the media helps to increase access to that information. During the shooting sprees in the D.C. area several years ago, police used the media to help track down the gunmen John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo. In the end, a man who had heard about it on TV tipped off the police and led to the eventual arrests. When Merah was still on the loose in Toulouse, the police were putting out very little information and local residents were turning on the radio and TV to inform themselves. Even now, the media is becoming the tool for people to raise serious questions about the police handling of the crisis and the growth of extremism in France and abroad.

And yet, these killings were Merah’s foil-proof plan to get the microphone for his causes, to spread the messages he wanted to spread. The media allowed the horror of his crimes to reach more people. What do I say when my friend tells me her nine-year-old son heard about it on the news and is angry and scared and doesn’t understand?

People have already said that in a lot of ways, Merah won.  He took the lives he wanted to take and was never arrested as he died in a hail of bullets, fighting to the end.

I still don’t know what I think about all this… who does? But I will say that in deciding not to publish Merah’s images, I believe that Al-Jazeera denied him one last grisly victory.

The interview jitters

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fra, france

The past few weeks have marked a big achievement for me. I have written two original stories for Le Figaro in English, both of which required interviews in French.

I can’t even tell  you how terrified I was before the first call. I felt like I was still in my first journalism class as a junior in high school: I had questions painstakingly written out and was incredibly overprepared.

Part of the reason I was so overprepared was because I had been busy finding about five hundred and one reasons to put off the first call.

This is stupid, I finally told myself, catching myself in the act of refilling the electric tea kettle to put off calling. You are a journalist, you love talking to people and, besides, if your boss is letting you do this, you must be ready, I said.

And I picked up the phone. I dialed the first number ’0′ and launched into the ’6 .’ The telephone began to screech in my ear.  Not good.

I finally figured out how to dial out of the office (step one.) And, guess what? That was the hardest part!

When the person at the other end picked up, I stopped thinking about what I was actually doing. The journalist me took over from the scared me.

It was only when I hung up a few minutes later that I realized what I had done. I had just interviewed someone. In French. On the phone. Something I had been dreaming of doing for a long, long time. And it had been a success! There were no weird pauses or miscommunications or anything.

The newsroom was absolutely silent, but I kind of felt like hopping around and dancing.

My boss glanced over from next to me and said in typical French bemusement and understatement : ‘Well, look at that! She does pretty well on the phone!’

Just like anything in this world, the first one is always the hardest. Each subsequent call gave me more and more confidence as the people I interviewed acted like… well, just like the people I interviewed in English.

A week later, all fear was gone and I spent an entire day conducting interview after interview. If it gives you any idea of how many calls I made, I had to take off my earrings because pinning the phone on my shoulder was starting to hurt too much. 

How long will French politicians have private private lives?

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afkc, Bill Clinton, campaign, carla bruni-sarkozy, expat, france, Francois Hollande, French election, journalism, le figaro, media, Monica Lewinsky, Nicolas Sarkozy, paris, politics, radio, Thomas Jefferson, travel, tv, U.S., valerie trierweiler

How much money they make, their religions, their families and family statuses… Our visual journalists laid it all out in a diagram comparing American Republican candidates Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum.

It was a cool graphic and, in an afternoon meeting, someone launched the idea of doing a similar thing for the roughly 10 candidates of the French presidential election.

‘But where would we find that information on them ?’ One journalist asked. ‘You would loose so much time trying to find it out.’

You Americans, can you imagine a world where it would be difficult to find out details like a candidate’s religion or income or personal life ?

Right there is the big difference between the media and the American elections and the media and the French elections.

The question of religion

Mitt Romney, a current Republican hopeful, is Mormon. Pretty much every American media source has been talking about how this may hurt his campaign. In short, his out-of-the-mainstream religion is a major issue for some voters in the U.S.

I have been interviewing a lot of people about Mormonism in France this week and I have asked them all whether they think France would be ready for a Mormon president.

Everyone has told me that, in France, it is a non-issue.

‘People’s religions don’t really have impact,’ the mayor of a Parisian suburb told me. ‘Spiritual ideas… we don’t read them in the same manner.’

France also doesn’t read other personal life questions in the same way.

Love or something like it

Remember when Bill Clinton was almost impeached after the Monica Lewinsky scandal ? Admittedly, that scandal also had the lying under the oath thing… but, frankly, that just wouldn’t happen in France. I mean, former president François Mitterrand had a daughter with another woman while he was married to Danielle. No biggie. We still love them all. Yet, in the US, we find that stuff so interesting that we are still digging up stuff about the extra-marital affairs of our founding fathers. And, even more importantly, there are people who have changed their opinions about Bill Clinton, as president, because of Monica or Thomas Jefferson, because of Sally Hemings.

That said, that may be changing. The French presidential elections this year are more ‘people’ than ever before.

It may have started with Sarkozy, whose extravagant ‘bling-bling’ lifestyle, his breakup with his ex-wife and his relationship with former Italian supermodel Carla Bruni all made headlines.

But this trend has been accelerated by the DSK scandal. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the IMF, was expected to run for president and beat Sarkozy. Then, last May, he was accused of sexually assaulting a hotel maid. The scandal got more and more tabloid. There were other accusations of assault, allegations of involvement in an international prostitution ring and DSK admitted to a sex addiction.

France and the French media literally did not know what to do with themselves. Personal life and politics traditionally are kept very separate. Yet this stuff was sordid and it was taking over the French media: it was politics à l’americaine.

A different take

Still, the relationship of the French media with politics remains very different from the American relationship. Some limits are even government-ordained, for example, there is a rule that all candidates must get equal speaking time on TV and radio. There are government employees who literally sit in an office and clock the amount of time candidates appear on each TV and radio channel.

I recently worked on an interview about the companions of the principal French presidential candidates in this year’s election. YES, the election is more ‘people’ than ever before and everyone wants to talk to Carla Bruni-Sarkozy and Valérie Trierweiler, Socialist candidate François Hollande’s companion. But there is still a level of distance and respect. Check out the article about them. It is really interesting.

The good stuff

Just as a last thought, I have to say that I think the French press are very good to avoid the ‘people’ angle of this year’s elections.

Because it is juicy stuff.

As I summarized for Le Figaro in English. 

Welcoming home Édith and William

Tags

Bashar Assad, Edith Bouvier, expat, france, Homs, international, journalism, le figaro, Nicolas Sarkozy, paris, Syr, Syria, travel, war, William Daniels

Last Friday, near the end of the day, a group of Le Figaro journalists gathered by our wall of news screens.  Among them, I recognized the head of the International Bureau and the head of Economics.

People chatted casually and my boss and I handed out candy, but all of our eyes were fixed on the live feed of French news channel BFM TV. The cameraman had been alternating between two equally bad shots of the nose of an airplane for the past few minutes. If you didn’t know more, you’d be bored out of your mind.

But those gathered in the newsroom were thinking about what was happening inside the airplane, where medics were carefully putting Édith Bouvier on a stretcher and trying to avoid jarring her broken leg. In a few seconds, Édith would be on French soil: something she must have thought might never happen again.

Édith Bouvier was a freelance journalist reporting from the hell of war torn Homs, Syria. She was a regular contributor to Le Figaro. Two weeks ago, she and photographer William Daniels were caught in shelling in the town. Édith was badly injured: her leg was dislocated and broken in multiple places. From their hiding place in a building without water or electricity, she, Daniels and a Syrian doctor managed to get a video up on YouTube. In the video, Édith begged for a ceasefire so that they could escape and she could get medical attention.

If only it was that easy. The shelling didn’t stop. According to reports, Bashar Assad didn’t want to cooperate. The Red Crescent and International Red Cross launched several rescue missions, all of which failed. Snowfall in Syria, as well as the mere fact that Édith couldn’t walk, complicated rescue efforts.

Malaise set in as the days ticked by.

Then, on Wednesday of last week, the press buzzed with the good news that the two had finally escaped. President Nicolas Sarkozy made a public statement expressing relief… but it was a false alarm. Only a few hours later, Le Figaro broke the news that the two journalists were still trapped.

We waited. Things didn’t look good. France has already lost two journalists in Syria. Gilles Jacquier died last November. French Rémi Ochlik and American journalist Marie Colvin died in the attack where Bouvier was injured.

And that’s just the casualties among journalists— and Western ones at that. Since the revolt against Bashar Assad’s regime began in Syria, countless soldiers, rebels and civilians have died.

But on Friday, the news we were waiting for finally came. The pair (as well as British photographer Paul Conroy and Spanish journalist Javier Espinosa) had been rescued by Syrian activists. After three days of excruciating travel, Édith Bouvier and William Daniels had made it to neighboring Lebanon. Édith was in a hospital, awaiting transport back to France.

And so, on Friday afternoon, we gathered in the newsroom to watch the two journalists come home. Nicolas Sarkozy met their plane on the tarmac.

Minutes ticked by and the camera lingered on the airplane and the shivering group of journalists, family and VIPs waiting on the tarmac. In the newsroom, some of the Le Figaro journalists wandered back to stream the event on their personal computers. But we all watched. These were our colleagues; Édith even worked for our company. Our paper was able to describe what was happening in Syria because of her work. We all owed her.

Finally, Daniels emerged from the plane. He raised his fist, pumping the air.

‘Got it !’ said a journalist nearby, who had snapped a screen shot of the image. We all gathered to look at the picture: the gleeful look on Daniels’ face at the moment of his triumphant return after who knows what horrors. It was a beautifully captured moment. A miracle.

A few minutes later, Édith’s stretcher appeared in the doorway of the airplane. As she was lying down, we couldn’t see her—well, not really anyway.

But what we could see is an image I won’t soon forget. Unable to move from her stretcher, Édith stretched her arms out over her head, reaching towards her family. They rushed towards her and we could see her clutching them close. All you could see was arms.

A few minutes later, I sent that image out to all of our readers along with a special message for the journalists: ‘Welcome home.’

NOTE: As a result of worsening repressions carried out by the Syrian government, France has pulled its embassy from Syria. It is a political move, but people are still dying there every day.

A friend of mine works for UNESCO. She said that in recent executive committee meetings, the Syrian delegate has defended the government’s actions by saying ‘We reserve the right to fight terrorism in our country.’

Adventures at Le Figaro gym

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american, exercise, expat, france, french, gym, journalism, journalist, le figaro, travel

Guess what? Le Figaro has a gym. I know. It is so corporate and so wonderful, especially in the glacial weather.

No one told me about the gym, which is hidden in the bowels of our massive building. But, quite honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if the was a zoo in our building or maybe even a gateway to another world. It is absolutely huge and I am always stumbling on new stairways or elevators or rooms. Last week, I learned there is a whole different entrance to our building and frankly, the marble and the big sweeping double staircase are about as glorious as the Louvre.

In any case, another intern told me about the gym and emailed me the schedule of free classes.

Last Monday, I went down there with her. It really was at the end of the world: I swear we hiked through winding, nonsensical corridors for like ten minutes. I had almost lost faith in its existence when we arrived.

And sure enough, we opened a door and entered into a little tiny gym with a mirrored wall, a treadmill, weights, an elliptical and a changing room with showers. About twenty people in sweats were already lifting their arms in the air.

And so, in a surreal break from my day of news headlines, typing and translation, I joined the group. I love taking exercise, dance and yoga classes in French. You learn all different great words and if you don’t understand, you just look at everyone else and wave your arms like they are doing. You bond over the moves you can’t do (thirty more squats) and the small successes (drink break!).

Anyway, I had such a great time at Monday’s class that I returned a few days later.  Because Monday’s class was pretty relaxing, I was not expecting an intense workout: but that is what I got. But then again, I never really end up getting what I am expecting in France (I should know that by now.)

A stocky former boxer cheered us on but counted brutally slowly as we strained every muscle in our bodies in squats and kicks and all the rest of it.

It was a great gym bonding experience and a little surreal to return to the newsroom afterwards. But that is what this gym is: surreal. And full of good stories.

The other day, I went with another intern and the instructor failed to show up. We were ready to give up when a journalist who happened to be working out decided to be a gym teacher for the day (I promise, we didn’t ask him to.) Instead, he just began to give us advice and pretty soon, instructions. Like many French people I have met, he had a way of seeming like a complete expert (I mean, who was I to know if he wasn’t?) and so when he said “fifty rotatations,” well, we did it.

Forty-five minutes later, we were sweaty and tired. Our “instructor” was still going strong, but we thanked him and made a quick exit towards the changing room.

As my friend so artfully put it, “He sure missed his true calling.”

How art history is helping me understand French politics

Tags

afkc, american, campaign, expat, fbi, france, French election, journalist, le figaro, le figaro in english, Nicolas Sarkozy, obama, paris, politics, travel

Last week, Sarkozy (finally) announced that he will be running for re-election. Pretty funny actually because it has been really obvious for quite some time. Kind of like the couple that has been living together for years and years and finally decides to get married: it’s symbolic, in any case.

As part of the official announcement, he unveiled a trifold digital strategy and his campaign image.  I ended up working on articles about each of these two topics and they become the two most in-depth political articles that I have yet to work on at Le Figaro.

I realized that some things change (politics in the age of the internet) but some things (use of image) stay the same. As I analyzed Sarkozy’s campaign poster, I kept thinking about the art history essays I wrote on medieval paintings as an undergraduate. The horizon indicates the future…

Check out the links. I think they are pretty interesting!

» The Face of Sarkozy’s Election Campaign

» Sarkozy Confirms Re-Election Bid: “Yes, I Am a Candidate”

» Is Sarkozy More of an Internet Candidate Than Obama?

Oh, and while you are at it… this one made my Friday afternoon! It is such a good story, I almost don’t believe it! Make sure to read the end.

» France: FBI Agent Forgets Secret Obama File