People are the same all over the world

(Photo: Kipcamp, Ohio state university)

A great experience, a battle worth fighting and fantastic journalists.

It's been a few days since returned back home after my US experience. I'm still a bit tired, New York is intense, Brooklyn is beautiful and the flight back was long. But even though it was great to be back in NYC the midwest made a great impression on me. Of course Kipcamp itself, with great training and inspiring lecturers, was the most important experience, but I didn't think I was going to have such a great time while I was learning a lot.

The kipcamp environment is a fantastic forum for interesting meetings and important discussions. I never thought I would get the chance to meet so many talented, experienced and insightful journalists. I've listened to stories and shared experiences of fun, good, bad and horrible and I'm really thankful to the other fellows that opened up to me.

However, the most important thing I learned is that journalists are the same all over the world. We fight the same battle to do good, to expose injustices, to stop corruption and to tell a good story. We face the same problems with cutbacks in our news organisations and in our everyday work we have to deal with people trying to tell us how to do our jobs, trying to stop us from doing our jobs or threatening us because we do our jobs.

This has only strengthened me in my conviction that what we do is important, and that it's worth whatever shit we have to go through. It doesn't matter if you're an investigative reporter or tell stories of local government, if you cover fashion or go to war zones to report. Because also people are the same all over the world and they deserve the free press, human rights and whichever truth we are able to tell them.