Olympic Reporting Practicum: A Unique Summer in Paris

Having the Olympics in Paris this summer has been quite remarkable. The city has had to adapt in many (more or less) visible ways. For AUP summer students, it was a great opportunity to take a close look at what it means for a city to host such an event. Through the Paris 2024 Reporting Practicum led by Professor of Communication, Media and Culture Jurgen Hecker, students (both full-time and visiting) could leverage this unforgettable moment to hone their professional skills. In the fall of 2023, Hecker had already run a course entitled Reporting the Olympics, which connected students with the Olympic Broadcasting System (OBS) and led to paying jobs during the Olympic Games. It only seemed logical for Hecker to then teach the summer course that concluded a few weeks before the start of the official games.

Students in the practicum met for three-and-a-half-hour sessions four times a week during the month of June, with the objective of documenting all the changes happening in Paris in preparation for the Olympics. The students decided the best way to do so would be to build a television newsroom, complete with student anchors, photographers, videographers, and journalists in the field who put together newscasts that were then published on AUP’s journalism platform Peacock. “It was very rich content-wise,” comments Professor Hecker. “Students covered things like congestion in the city, access for disabled people, metro prices going up; they did stories about dating during the Olympics, restaurant etiquette for foreign tourists coming to France and interviewed locals, other students at AUP and visitors.”

While this summer’s group focused on the traditional media outlet of television news, with insight from Nexstar (an American media company with 200 local TV outlets) with whom AUP partnered for this course, the group also managed TikTok and Instagram accounts. “This is the first time we’ve had a thematic course like this in the summer,” says Hecker, “and we could definitely do it again about any other topic or event that’s going on – tourism, cultural events, political crises.” Paris is one of the most media-savvy and reported-on cities in the world, he adds, “so it only makes sense.”

Writing on LinkedIn, student Milena Pino celebrated the opportunity, calling the reporting practicum an unforgettable experience. “I honed my research skills to uncover insightful stories and developed my on-air presence through scriptwriting and anchoring,” said Pino, “this experience solidified my passion for journalism, allowed me to refine my skills and immerse myself in a new culture as an aspiring journalist.”

For Hecker, who says he loves when he can get students out of the classroom to do some real-life reporting, the results of the 4-credit practicum could not have been better. “I closed my eyes and I felt like I was in a professional newsroom,” he said, reiterating how impressed he was with the students’ commitment. “We had students who literally came to Paris just for this course,” and apparently, it showed!