LAUSANNE, July 1, 2020: A rich panel is ready to attend the 1st AIPS e-Conference on July 2. The event, which celebrates the World Sports Journalists Day and the 96th anniversary from the foundation of AIPS, will bring together journalists from all over the world and a prestigious group of panelists from all continents, who will share significant perspectives regarding the challenges that the sports media culture is called to face in this time of change. To date, over 500 journalists from 115 countries have already confirmed their participation.
THE PANEL The international panel titled “Has Covid-19 affected journalists’ independence and future?” will bring together some of the most influential voices in sports media sector. From Asia and Oceania, three professionals of great thickness will “sit” among the guests on the virtual stage. Two long-experienced Olympic journalists like the Deputy Managing Director at Kyodo News Shinsuke Kobayashi and the Senior Reporter from ABC News Tracey Holmes, together with a monument of Indian sports press and National Sports Editor at The Indian ExpressSandeep Dwivedi, will indeed take the floor on July 2.
ASIA
SANDEEP DWIVEDI (India) started as a trainee sports reporter for The Indian Express in 1994. Since then, he has been working in the same newspaper for 25 years until he finished in 2019. Sandeep has been in-charge of the sports department of this national daily for the last 10 odd years. The Indian Express has a team of specialized reporters spread all over the country. With cricket being the major sports in the country, Sandeep spent most of his working life writing about cricketers. During his career, he covered 5 World Cups, 2 Junior World Cups and also the Commonwealth Games. A few years back, Sandeep was awarded with the India’s most prestigious honour for sports journalists – the Ramnath Goenka Award. Having written about most Olympics sports, he regularly contributes to his newspaper’s opinion pages.
SHINSUKE KOBAYASHI (Japan) joined Kyodo News, Japan’s leading news agency in 1987 as a sports reporter. He covered numerous national and international sporting events including five Summer and five Winter Olympic Games. Having enjoyed spells in New York and London as a correspondent, Kobayashi became Deputy Editor in 2010, then Chief Editor of Sports News Section at Kyodo News from 2014 to 2018. He has been Secretary General of Japan Sports Press Association since 2015. He is a member of the IOC Press Committee. He now leads Kyodo’s coverage of the 2020 Tokyo Games as Managing Director of Olympic and Paralympic News Office.
OCEANIA
TRACEY HOLMES (Australia)has worked in journalism and communications for 30 years. She has anchored her own programs on radio and television in several countries around the world, from some of the world’s biggest events, and is a published author. In the lead up to the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games she was the Media Information Manager with SOCOG (the Sydney Organising Committee) and has combined her knowledge and experience of covering 12 Olympic Games by being appointed as Chief Mentor and program designer for the IOC’s Youth Olympic Games Young Reporters Program overseeing young journalists from across the world, covering all platforms.Tracey’s work has been broadcast on some of the world’s most respected media platforms, including the ABC, CNN International, CGTN, Arirang TV, and Dubai Eye. As a public relations and media professional her past contracts include the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games and the Australian Bicentennial Authority. As an educator Tracey has designed programs for and lectured for UTS (University of Technology, Sydney), Macleay College (Journalism), the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, the Asian Broadcasting Union (Malaysia) and the IOC’s Young Reporters Program (international). She is an award winning interviewer, having sat down and drawn the best out of a collection of the world’s most interesting people – from Prime Ministers to Presidents, Kings and Sheikhs, from awe inspiring athletes to challenging and thought provoking academics, from legendary entertainers to the most ordinary men and women in the street. She has twice been named as a finalist in Australian journalism’s most prestigious awards, the Walkleys. In 2020 her ABC program The Ticket was named ‘Sport Australia Best Analysis of Sport Business’ program; The Ticket finished runner-up in the international AIPS sport press awards for best audio program; was a finalist in the New York Radio Awards; and Tracey also finished in the final five for the AIPS print journalism award. Her work has taken her around the world several times, she is a sought after guest speaker at international conferences and has lived and worked in Hong Kong, Beijing, Abu Dhabi, Dubai and several cities in Australia. As well as being recognized internationally as a broadcast journalist and anchor of both news/current affairs and sports programs, Tracey has also written extensively for op-ed pages and feature pages of leading daily newspapers, is a published author, has published academic work and has been a regular guest commentator for media outlets around the world.
