My grandparents or great grandparents on my mother’s side did not all stay in Venezuela their entire life. My grandfather had Italian origins and studied in both Spain and Mexico. His adoptive mother spoke several languages and had lived in the Netherlands, Curaçao and Trinidad before going back to Venezuela. They were citizens of the world in a time when traveling was not as common as it is today. On my father’s side, my grandmother had to travel to different countries in Europe during World War II, and kept traveling later in life, when she raised her children with my grandfather around Africa.
Column
The Amsterdammer | Going home: it’s not that simple
A normal family WhatsApp group spams everyone with jokes, holiday pictures, and maybe some voice-notes, mistakenly sent by their grandmother. Mine essentially consists of political matters, text messages notifying others that there is milk in the supermarket or that electricity is gone. When it’s someone’s birthday, we send voice-notes. When someone is traveling, we send a text message saying we’re boarding the plane. When a newborn joins the family, we send pictures. We are living a virtual family life because our country is facing a terrible situation that has spread us around the world. As a family we are united, but we are physically apart from each other.
The Amsterdammer | Venezuelan elections don’t matter
In Venezuela, everything is okay. Or at least, that is what the government keeps repeating to the population. On average, 1 person is murdered every 21 minutes. The average salary is under 10 dollars a month in the black market. Hyperinflation is expected to rise up to 13,000 percent this year. But for the government, most of these numbers are created by American imperialism. Because everything is okay.
Venezuelans protest in Caracas on April 2013 the day after Nicolas Maduro was declared President. His opponent, Henrique Capriles, demanded a recount of the votes. Isabel Bonnet / The Amsterdammer
The Amsterdammer | My country has no short answer
It all started with my mother telling me that I should start using less toilet paper because we couldn’t find it in the supermarkets anymore. When she was able to find some, milk or oil started to disappear. A few months later, “supermarket hopping” to find food became a full-time job. “They are only allowing 1 milk box per person, I’m on my way to pick you up.” She would say on the phone –whenever we were lucky enough to find some. Even so, this is considered a good situation in comparison with how it is today.
The Amsterdammer: It Was a Necessity
In March 2018, I founded the student-run newspaper The Amsterdammer in Amsterdam and wrote an editorial to introduce the project.
Several organisations offer the opportunity for students to write articles about specific topics. However, we did feel as though we belonged anywhere. There was no place for creative students who wanted to explore journalism in a free but organised way. The Amsterdammer was a necessity for those who wanted to explore practical journalism. Student journalism is necessary on many levels.
“We strongly believe that one can only make a change in a macro level if we know how to make a change in a micro level”
Often covering the atrocities and misfortune of some citizens, journalists are considered pessimists. However, we believe that this is what makes journalists optimists. They hope to make a change in society by covering the inequalities and injustices around the world. And here is where The Amsterdammer strongly believes that one can only make a change at a macro level, if they know how to make a change at a micro level. As exciting as covering international news may seem, we can only learn how to report these events if we have prior experience of covering local news. When covering local news, we learn how to dig into a topic in order to find the real story behind its appearance. We learn how to approach and engage with people, and more importantly: we learn how a newsroom works. Small newspapers offer the opportunity for the staff to explore different areas of the journalistic profession by letting them write columns, articles, take photographs, edit and produce media content.
We are optimists. We believe that The Amsterdammer will allow students to enhance their writing skills and become more curious about their surroundings. We have faith that our staff is the future of journalism: they are learning the workings of the profession at an early stage of their lives. They are determined and curious. They joined The Amsterdammer when it was nothing but an idea, or maybe a dream that seemed too ambitious.
Students have a different perspective on the events covered by the media. We are sensible, curious, and willing to put the work in for free. As awful as this can sound, it makes a big difference in comparison to professionals in the field: Intrinsic motivation, and the drive to gain experience can lead students to be more truthful in their coverage in comparison to paid journalists. They are not looking to be published, but simply to learn and discover new areas of journalism. They are not yet jaded, their curiosities are still piqued by ordinary things: everything is story-worthy.
As student journalists, we should always feel like there is something new to learn, and be curious enough to pay attention to every detail, and rediscover the world every time. There is always a new story waiting to be told.
“We want to connect with students and be their voice”
Indeed, student journalism allows students to immerse themselves in the body of media professionals early in their life. Working on a short deadline encourages them to actively seek out and write stories, an exercise that improves their writing skills. Students create content for the students. This not only allows them to better understand their audience, but also challenges them to step out of their comfort zone: while covering an event, they are not students anymore, but journalists.
Nowadays, people can share news instantly through social media, which has increased the spread of fake news. People don’t read printed newspapers as much as they used to, and they would rather share articles based only on their headlines. We aim to encourage students to dedicate some of their social-media-time to The Amsterdammer by looking at our audiovisual and written content, and encourage them to write small articles about the city or the university themselves. We want to connect with students and be their voice. We want them to interact with our writers or editors, tell us the issues that bother them, and we will send a reporter to have a look at it and investigate the issue. We want to be the voice of those who cannot be heard.