The Chandler Bing Complex

By: Bruno Garcez | 01/19/2010

Those who've watched the TV show "Friends" might recall that the characters never knew exactly what was the job of one of their best mates, Chandler Bing.

Well, for well over a month I knew how it was to be in Chandler Bing's shoes, although, on my behalf, I must add that what I am doing is far more exciting than working in a data processing job, like Chandler.

First of all, there isn`t a title, as I had in the past: correspondent, producer, reporter, none of those fit the mould.

I had, and still have, to come up with a tagline, which went something along these lines:

" I`m recruiting and training citizen journalists to cover poverty related issues and social matters and see that their news stories and videos reach the mainstream media".

Overall, it's a job that comprises the techniques of being a diplomat, a community organizer, a salesman, an editor and a teacher.

Given that multiple nature, several doubts always emerged when speaking to different people:

"Are you alone doing the training? Is it only happening in one city? All this is just one year? What kind of training will you provide? Why are Knight Foundation and the ICFJ doing this? Who do you want to train? What happens when you leave?"

I tried to provide as detailed answers as possible. The training and the recruitment process are ongoing. I am now receiving resumés, with the help of different organizations and likely partners and people are getting to know what I`m doing, understanding the nature and, more important, finding if feasible.

In the last few weeks I have struck likely partnerships with O Globo and Extra newspapers in Rio, with the country`s main webportal, Uol, here in São Paulo, and also engaged with Unicef. They all seemed keen to hop on our boat.

I mentioned briefly that I was also working on the first steps of a public service journalism course, financed by AT&T, but since there wasn't a specific role meant for any of these partners, I didn't get into details.

The citizen journalism course and the public service one will differ slightly. The first is aimed at journalism connected in one way or another with impoverished communities from different parts of Brazil. The latter is aimed at professional journalists overall.

The first one is a live course and aims to be a bit longer. The latter is comprised of a longer online part and concludes with 3 days of live course.

Now that things are beginning to work out, that both projects are gaining shpae and that people are beginning to understand what I'm doing here, I also begin to overcome the Chandler Bing complex.

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