A NON-SPONTANEOUS SPONTANEOUS PROTEST

Today's agenda was fairly casual. After the gracious tour of Radio France International, I had planned on heading to Rue de Grenelle via a short walk through the Esplanade des Invalides.

When I arrived at Invalides I saw a large crowd assembled on the lawn with large signs, loud chants, fire burning and flare guns.

My first French protest.

I was a tad hesitant at first, as I really just wanted to pick up a quick gift for my mother and get back to the hotel, but since I was the only one from the cohort on site, I decided to take a few shots. I mean the French did go through the trouble to set trash on fire.

The demonstrators today were farmers from the agriculture movement. There were probably 400 people there. They were very vocal and seemed genuinely concerned with their cause in light of the fact that protests are a regular occurrence in Paris.

Andrew Martinez

Magazine Journalism

COINCIDENCES SAVED MY STORY

Coincidences are a wonderful thing, especially when things are looking grim while working on a story. I originally had two stories planned out for London. Neither of them panned out. So what did I do? I wandered the streets a bit just trying to figure out what to do after all of the twenty or so shop owners I talked to brushed me off when I asked for an interview. Then I ran into Christian Garrucho somehow and we decided to go grab a tapioca drink from somewhere.

We figured our best shot at finding a shop that sold them was in Chinatown so we headed in that direction. While walking we noticed a small group of people on the sidewalk wearing pink and accompanied by a guy in a pig costume. I talked to one of the gentlemen about what they were doing and it turned out that they were doing a bit of charity work.

Bingo!

A story with interesting visuals and an angle that ties into the economy just as I needed one. I felt like money. Two days later in Paris, Mike Anderson and I headed over to the Montemarte district to try and get a few interviews about young people traveling. After a few mishaps on the Metro, and our apparent inability to properly use a map, we finally found the hostel we’d been looking for.

I walked in, asked the receptionist if he spoke English, and it turns out he’s from Washington D.C. Easy! – But it gets better. He goes to speak to the manager to clear the interview with him, and while we’re waiting four or five girls walked by us pulling their luggage into the hostel. I asked them if they spoke English, and it turned out they were American.

But that wasn’t the best part. As we’re waiting for the girls to come back down, I heard a gentleman speaking to the receptionist with an American accent. I approached him for an interview and it turns out he’ll be attending San Jose State next semester. What are the odds of that?

It just goes to show you that with work and a little bit of persistence, sometimes things just fall into your lap … wait, that doesn’t really sound right.

Sometimes, you just get lucky.

Hang on a bit, let’s try that again.

Work hard, and it seems like things just magically fall into place.

Harvey Rañola
Multimedia Editor
Broadcast Journalism