Photo by Chris de Bode

In the middle of the World Cup, 18 Twenty Ten journalists were in the midst of the activity in the heart of Johannesburg. Nine had arrived a week prior to the kick off of the World Cup and would be leaving at the end of the week. Nine halfway through and would be staying until the end of the tournament. During this midpoint, Twenty Ten caught up with Greg Marinovich, editor in chief of the editorial team, to discuss his vision for the editorial direction and how football shapes the productions.

Carly Diaz: Tell me a little bit about your role in the project.
Greg Marinovich: Essentially, I’m editor in chief, which means that I’m responsible for the overall output of the participants of the Dream Team, as well as the All Stars, whom we still deal with throughout Africa, as well as coordinating and directing the efforts of the editorial team here.

Carly Diaz: And you’re involved with the photographers, print and radio journalists on all their stories?
Greg Marinovich: Essentially it works in two ways: we encourage the participants to come with their own ideas that they’ve hatched in the depths of their psyche and their brains and their knowledge and their history. That’s our first choice in directing the stories towards a great, authentic product. Failing which, or in addition to which, we also have a whole bunch of ideas that the editorial team has worked on and obviously there are a lot of things that are close to my heart that are in there. Then we direct people onto those and work with them. So you have a local South African knowledge in these stories, but with an eye of an African from another country.

Carly Diaz: There are also a lot of story themes that you are working on and developing. How did these themes come about and how are you working them out through the different media?
Greg Marinovich: Some of them are themes that have come up in the workshops in the course of discussion. Some of them are issues that we talk about around a beer and food. And some of them are sparked by stuff that we’ve long wanted to do. For example, I’ve introduced a lot of participants to two different communities who are kind of the loadstone of South African society. We’ve had lots of people going to do whatever they want, but around those communities. So what happens is that we have a common thread running through many stories, i.e. a geographic thread so that in a year’s time or five or so we have an amazing cross section of one community. That is just much more telling than an extensive series of stories that don’t dig that deep.

Carly Diaz: So you’re also trying to get a perspective that doesn’t just focus on the matches and the World Cup, but a much broader perspective of things. How and why did you choose to do that?

Greg Marinovich: [Laughing] It was a dictate from me. Alright? I didn’t want it to be only about the matches. I like watching the matches on telly, but the outcome comes and goes and it doesn’t matter. There are some people who are complete soccer experts, that’s why they’re in this project, but they also recognize and relish the fact that society governs what happens on the soccer field. What we’re doing is documentary work in different media. It’s about life and documentary and the soccer is merely the hook, the entree. We are also reporting on matches and incidents. When Drogba was injured, we had a team in a house of expatriate Côte d’Ivoiriens watching the match. It was just this fantastic reportage on Drogba at the World Cup and you’re sitting with all these Ivoirians, it was just fantastic. We do react to news and to soccer news, definitely, but what we really look at is the deeper issues. We’ve got some fantastic soccer writers and writers in general. Joseph Opio from Uganda is leading this team effort on soccer being the opiate of the masses, much like Marx said religion was the opiate of the masses. In today’s world, religion is no longer state controlled, it’s not being used in any power. But soccer is. Soccer definitely is – across Africa – used as a measure of controlling and releasing public anger. Al-Alhy the most popular team in Egypt, is run by a minister. And it happens across Africa. We’re doing a big piece on that, which is using reporting from different people. It relates to soccer, it relates to results, it relates to performance which is really about society. That’s what we’re interested in.

Carly Diaz: Then football is kind of the perfect meeting point to touch on all of these different issues?
Greg Marinovich: It is because soccer is attainable to anybody. Not everyone can dream of becoming a doctor – you can but often it’s a pipe dream. But anybody can become a soccer player.

Carly Diaz: And do you think this dream and the centrality of football in this dream is specific to Africa?
Greg Marinovich: Well, it’s not. It’s common to Latin America, it’s common to many places. But in other countries there are often other avenues. In Africa, there are far fewer avenues available to people as a result of the economics, politics, demographics and the whole thing. Soccer touches on everyone’s lives either as a route of hope, out of poverty, or as a release from the tensions of the daily grind or as a way of expressing nationalism that’s not linked to political parties and corruption, many different things, many different ways that it touches people’s lives

Carly Diaz: With your background, how does your perspective feed into (especially) the photography of the project?
Greg Marinovich: Actually, the think I’m least involved in is the photography. Really. It’s a little disingenuous to say, but essentially I was a tutor for all of these people. So I know them well and they know what I want. I don’t need to micromanage in the least. It’s like documentary work: in depth, dig in, make it look great and make the pictures talk. We don’t want illustrative junk. So they’re all on board, it’s fabulous. With the multimedia, I’m the actual hands-on editor of that. The radio, I’m quite closely involved in because I love radio and there’s a lot of radio work and with the writing I work with Stefan, so I actually do much more editing of writing than I do of photographs.

Carly Diaz: From your perspective, what are some of the main successes and main failures of the project so far, being in the middle of it?
Greg Marinovich: I think one of the failures is to focus too closely on the World Cup, in a way, and to direct so many resources at this window. That’s also a strength in terms of getting out great material, but some of it is mixed with stuff that is necessary for the sponsorship of the program, the Dutch audience whom we need to feed stuff back to. We’re happy to, but it’s also day-to-day stuff that’s going to be irrelevant in five years’ time. Whereas I’d like it all to be essentially a slice of life that’s forever relevant, which is how the people in the project are working. The weaknesses and strengths are often on the same side of the coin. The biggest strength is that, as an editorial team and as an organization, we’ve encouraged people to let their own voices be heard in whatever media that is and we’re really pushing them to express themselves as subjectively as possible. Subjective is a dirty word to some people, but it doesn’t mean dishonest, it means we want to know what you think when you’re telling a story. We don’t want you to be a dispassionate observer. We don’t want it in the first person, but we want to know where you are. You’re not a microphone or a camera or a pen. You’re a person and what you choose to do is very important. To pretend there is an invisible lens through which you see things is nonsense. It’s very much about involving the purveyors of the media in the journey that the journalist takes.

Carly Diaz: Now that you are about halfway through the World Cup, the first group from the project will be leaving at the end of this week. What do you hope for the coming weeks and the end of the project?
Greg Marinovich: Our soccer angle depends very much on what the African teams are doing and one the one hand, if an African team makes it [to the round of 16], there are only two that can – Algeria and Ghana – depending on how far they go will dictate some of our coverage. It’s also very important to how we report on Africa’s first World Cup. On the other hand, I think some of the pressure of covering the meaning of the matches, the failures and successes, and social consequences, will evaporate. So we’re going to be left with a much freer slate on which to write. And I’m looking forward to that.

Carly Diaz: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Greg Marinovich: This isn’t the end, but really just the first step. My ideal for the project would be that the people who haven’t had the opportunity to hit the world stage would really rock. Learning how to hit deadlines, get better equipment. These are tiny costs. There’s the donor mentality that we shouldn’t give them things, “Don’t do it”. But they’ve proved themselves. They came with ghastly equipment. With gear like that, they’ll always be stuck in the bottom rungs. With the money they earn from this project, we encourage them to go buy good gear. You can teach enough theory, but if you can’t afford good gear you’re forever the ugly sister in the relationship. When it takes them forever to edit a radio production because the audio is bad, they’ll miss the deadline. We’re not charity, but a stepping stone to launch these journalists onto the international stage. These people can be in the top five percent of international media. They’ve got what is needed to be the best – the creativity, drive, the dedication. When they’re just working as a stringer, they can’t get out of the poverty trap when the agency stops paying after three photos. One of our photographers shoots for Reuters and they only pay $50 per picture for first three pictures, then any image they want after that is free.  The money isn’t in journalism. We’re trying to overcome that hurdle. There’s nothing lacking in their work, but they must overcome their barriers to success.