As of a few weeks ago, Jose Flores had never left the country. Now, he’s in Paris covering the Olympics.
“It’s been unreal,” he said.
Flores, of Modesto, is one of 26 Cal State Fullerton students participating in a sports journalism study abroad program this summer in France. Led by seasoned sports reporters Gayle Jansen Brisbane and Bob Young, the class has been running a makeshift newsroom out of a hostel about 15 minutes from the Eiffel Tower via metro.
“We have producers, editors and reporters, and we’ll have multiple production meetings throughout the week,” said senior Francisco Molina. “We’re actual reporters in the field. We wake up, meet up with everyone, take our Metro pass and a camera person and go venture to cover content.”
Although they lack credentials to official sports venues, that hardly slowed them down over the last two weeks of competition. They have secured interviews with athletes on home soil and abroad, gained access to Olympics training facilities and reported on policy around the Games. Third-year communications major Lina Naranjo penned a piece on Glendora boxer Jajaira Gonzalez that ran in The Orange County Register. Others are posting their work to a pop-up college website, csufolympics.com.
Cal State Fullerton students Ty Therien and Enrique Medina cover the 2024 Olympics from Paris for a study abroad program.
“Some of us have been able to tackle issues like transportation and how Paris prepared for that,” Molina said. “Others have done cultural stories or focused on health and safety. The river has been a huge topic. So that’s basically our day-to-day. Our job is to go out there and get those interviews.”
Brisbane previously taught or supervised many of the students during the academic year as a professor and advisor to Cal State Fullerton’s student-led weekly news program. She designed this study abroad class as a way to help them take their skills to the next level on the biggest stage of sports.
“I’ll tell you, being here with my students — probably half of them have never left the United States — and being able to introduce them not only to the Olympics but to working in sports media at the highest level has been so fulfilling,” she said.
For the students, it’s validation they belong on the world’s stage, they said.
“To get this experience before our professional careers even start — a lot of us talked about it last night and we were all gonna cry, especially with the backgrounds of our families — we never thought this would be possible,” Molina said.
“We’re out here from Cal State Fullerton, we’re humble, but we’ve worked our butts off,” Molina added. “We want to make sure people know who Cal State Fullerton is by the end of this trip.”
Young, a longtime sports reporter for the Arizona Republic, said the students fit right in with the industry pros.
“I think they found out that they belong,” he said.
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