After visiting L’Equipe today, I was really impressed with their ability to adapt as the market changes. To have a company in the early 1900’s and still be able to keep it going until today is rare. Sure there were some speed bumps along the way, but thinking about how much journalism has changed over the past 100+ years, I was really impressed. Eurosport and L’Equipe barely compare at all. Eurosport has almost no journalistic qualities. It is simply the production aspect of a ESPN type of television channel. L’Equipe compares to ESPN much better because they do the sport reporting and they publish their own content. Although their TV channel is smaller than Eurosport, it is still functioning and rather popular. So L’Equipe is more impressive to me because they are very closely related to ESPN in terms of journalism and production. At both places, however, the people were so kind. The presentations at both places were extremely well put together and I feel like I learned a lot from both. Personally, I was more intrigued with L’Equipe because of their actual sports reporting.
This morning we met with Jim Bittermann of CNN Paris and he taught us a lot about what it’s like being a big time reporter in one of the largest cities in the world. I definitely think that his journalism is geared more towards an American market but I wouldn’t call it bias. I just think that it’s his job as a CNN reporter to try and relate news in Paris and Europe as a whole to the United States. He keeps us Americans connected with France and Europe. I think as a journalist working for an American company overseas, you have a duty to your company and your majority audience to report stories that are more relatable to Americans. Not because you’re favoring the American audience, but because that is the main audience you are given as an employee of a U.S. based company.