Message from the ITWA board

[Simon Cambers]

As discussed at the Roland-Garros and Wimbledon meetings, the ITWA board would like to take a look at the existing membership criteria, to see if it needs updating, both for new members and existing members.

Keeping our membership as up to date as possible is vital in maintaining trust with the governing bodies, which will help with our continued efforts to provide full access at events.

At present, to be considered for membership of ITWA, new applicants need to have covered, in person, 15 tournaments over a two-year period, including at least three Grand Slams, each slam counting for two of the 15. They also need to be bona fide tennis journalists, working for legitimate tennis/sports organisations.

We would like your help with this, so please take a few moments to let us know any thoughts or suggestions you may have about how we can make the membership criteria as up to date and fair as possible.

[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.

[Marcel Hauck]

Thanks for starting the conversation, Vanni. I wholeheartedly agree with point 1. I don’t see a problem with someone occasionally writing a piece for a tournament or federation or helping out a week or two at a local tournament. However, no member of ITWA should work more than, say, 20 % or so of their time or their income for a federation, tournament, governing body, player or management agency as this constitutes a conflict of interest. Tom e, it’s important that journalists are as independent as possible.
I also agree with point 2, although it might be a bit more complicated. We shouldn’t discriminate against web-only news outlets, however, it seems important to me to set a certain standard to ensure they are legitimate journalists and not just fansites or company websites. Setting these standards might be a challenge but I’m sure we’ll find some criteria we can agree on.
As for the number of tournaments, I am a bit torn. It’s certainly true that it’s a lot easier to fulfill the required number in Europa than, say, Australia or Africa with so many ATP, WTA and Grand Slam tournaments within easy range. It’s also true that many of us find it harder and harder to fulfill the criteria because of budget constraints. On the other hand, I strongly believe, that ITWA members need to be present on-site at a certain number of tournaments. One of the main topics ITWA needs to fight for is access to players (and coaches), and this can only be done by those who experience said access (or lack thereof) first-hand. In the end, it’s not so much a matter of fairness than of what we need to stand for. I have no problem with relaxing the requirements for certain members from further away countries. But I think members need to have a certain presence at tournaments to properly identify problems and challenges that need to be addressed. You can’t do that working remotel from home.If we are not on-site and rely strictly on transcripts or videos, we end up getting only the information that the powers up there want us to have.

[Author]

Posts