[Vanni Gibertini]

I’ll try to break the ice and get the conversation started.

There are many topics that will have to be covered within the scope of this task, so I will begin by touching on some aspects of the current Constitution and membership criteria that I believe need to be addressed more urgently.

1. Article 5 of the Constitution prohibits membership on behalf of “journalists who work on a regular basis for governing bodies or as press officers for players, tournaments and tours”. However, this rule applies only to those members admitted after 2013. Ten years have passed from this date, and it should be time for a rule like this to either apply to everyone or to be abolished. I don’t see how “grandfather rights” of this kind benefit the association or tennis as a whole.

2. As already anticipated during the meeting in Paris, we should attempt to properly categorize the people who are using new forms of media (typically social media platforms) to distribute news about tennis. They are an already important presence in our world and it is unreasonable to expect their relevance to diminish in the foreseeable future. The sooner we acknowledge their existence, the better it will be for the relevance of the organization.

3. There currently is a requirement for existing and prospective members to cover 15 tournaments every two years, including three Grand Slam tournaments, with each Grand Slam tournament counting as two.
I find this criterion to be grossly unfair as it disproportionately benefits those journalists based in a certain area of the world. For example, a journalist based in the London area would be able to satisfy this criterion without ever traveling more than 300 miles from their residence or setting foot on a plane. That would be impossible for anyone living in Australia, or Asia, South America, or even North America.
I believe the solution would be to assign each event a score based on its importance, just like it happens for the ATP and WTA ranking, and then the minimum number of points required for membership should be different based on the country of residence.

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