When life plans change : from history student to international news

What happens when life's unexpected turns lead to discovering your true calling? Gaël Arellano never planned to become a journalist. Growing up between Luxembourg and Chile with a grandfather who ran a radio station, journalism was in his blood—but not in his plans. 

After leaving his political science studies in Brussels to care for his mother, Arellano's path took a decisive turn at the University of Luxembourg. While writing press releases for his professional rally driver brother, he caught the attention of newspaper Le Quotidien, launching what would become a 12-year career in journalism. Now at RTL Luxembourg, Arellano offers a rare glimpse into the realities of modern news reporting—from the peaceful-looking newsroom that's actually "on fire" to the unpredictable workdays that can stretch from planned leisure to midnight deadlines in an instant.

Whether you're contemplating your educational path, curious about media careers, or simply interested in how global news reaches your screen, this conversation offers valuable insights from someone who lives at the intersection of words and action every day. Subscribe to Alumni Stories for more inspiring journeys from University of Luxembourg graduates who've found their unique paths in the professional world.

Read Gael's article on Gaza on RTL Today

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Visit the website : bce.uni.lu

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Transcript

Introduction

Masti 0:02

Hello and welcome to Alumni Stories, a podcast brought to you by the University of Luxembourg. I'm your host, Masti. Let me give you an idea of what Alumni Stories is all about. Whether you've studied here before, or you're curious and consider pursuing your studies at the University of Luxembourg, or just want to listen to interesting people, whatever it might be, you're at the right place. I know it sounds forward, but let me break it down for you. Every episode will star a former student who finished their degrees and has set a foot into the working world, or, as I like to call it, the grown-up life. We'll get a glimpse of each individual, their personal ups and downs, their survival strategies, the recipe to balance uni and life, and much more. So if you're like me, someone who's been looking for the right study program but hasn't been able to find the right fit yet, call this your lucky day, because this podcast is made for you. So, without any further ado, let's dive into today's episode.

Masti 1:09

Today's guest on Alumni Stories has a lot to tell. He is a professional journalist and a fellow podcaster working at RTL here in Luxembourg. Growing up half Luxembourgish and half Chilean, he was given the opportunity to meet two different cultures, shaping his childhood and perspectives. In his field, juggling more than two things at a time is very likely to happen, which is why efficiency and capacity are truly important for progress. Although words, both written and spoken, play a big role in his profession, he believes that actions speak louder than that. Let's find out why he thinks that way, how the life of a journalist looks like and his advice on getting into the scene. Please welcome Gael Arellano.

Gaël 1:52

Hi!

Masti 1:54

Hi, thank you for being here. I'm so excited to have you here.

Gaël 1:56

Very

Masti 1:57

Yeah, because you're the first journalist I've talked to in my life, I think. To get to know you a little better, maybe you can tell us about yourself and your own words.

Gaël 2:07

Well, I think that phrase I used "actions speak louder than words" pretty much defines me. I'm a person of action, which is ironic being a journalist writing and doing so much stuff with words, but I like to be implicated in everything I do and everything I prepare, everything I report about, I want to know about it, I want to be there. I don't want to do it with a phone or whatever. So I'm very much a person of action.

Masti 2:39

And can you tell us, maybe, how you ended up being a journalist? I think that's quite interesting.

Gaël 2:45

It was actually by accident, even though in my family I have a couple of journalists, especially my granddad who was a kind of a very well-known journalist in Chile. He opened up his own radio, radio Latina, that exists here in Luxembourg as well - it's not the same group though. And I never really thought I'm going to be a journalist. I just started studying and the opportunity came up at some point to write for a paper that's actually here, in Belval, le Quotidien. I used to write some communiqués de presse for my brother, which was a rally driver.

Masti 3:27

Can we talk about your family constellation here? Your grandfather created -

Gaël 3:31

A radio, yeah.

Masti 3:32

And it's also still existing here but it's a different group, you said. And your brother is a rally driver?

Gaël 3:39

He used to be a professional rally driver, yes. That's my older brother. We're five, so pretty big family.

Masti 3:46

And what are the other ones doing?

Gaël 3:49

The others have a little bit more of a classical kind of jobs. My brother's a professional rally driver and, pretty impressively, managed to become a Partner in a lawyer firm at the same time.

From student to accidental journalist

Masti 4:04

Wow, I don't even know what to say because I've never heard that before in my life. So you grew up, you saw your grandpa having that radio station, so you had some inspiration before?

Gaël 4:17

Not really because my granddad, being a political refugee, came to Luxembourg and, as soon as the dictatorship ended in Chile, went back to Chile, opened the radio up again because it was bombed at the time of the dictatorship. So he opened it up under a different name. Same location, though. I didn't really get to see much because we went to Chile once a year. I did participate, I remember now, to some kids' programs that we had on Sundays or Saturdays but that was for fun. I liked it but I never really thought I'm going to do that. And, like I said, I started writing for my brother and Le Quotidien came on knocking saying "hey, you're pretty good at writing, would you like to write for us? And that's how the whole thing started.

Masti 5:06

But did you like writing in general before?

Gaël 5:09

Yes, actually that came up already in my studies when I was at the European school. I had probably one of the best French teachers around, madame Lornay, who is I think now in Brussels. She kind of ignited that passion of writing and putting things into words. She really, really kept that flame going.

Masti 5:38

So, she inspired you to maybe even see a profession inside of writing and anything that is has something to do with that?

Gaël 5:46

little bit, yeah, a little bit. At the time, I had so many ideas about what I was going to do. There was so many things that you can do. I mean everybody goes through that around 17, 18 years of age. And university's coming up and you're like, what am I gonna do? The only thing I knew is I wanted to study political science, and that's how the whole thing kind of started.

Masti 6:07

But you went for History, in the BCE.

Gaël 6:10

Yeah, actually that's more of a life emergency kind of situation that happened. I came back to Luxembourg because my mother was quite sick and I went to the bachelor's degree that was the closest to what I was already learning.

Masti 6:28

At that time, you were already signed up for the bachelor's in Brussels, I think.

Gaël 6:33

I was in Brussels yeah, studying political science. Exactly.

Masti 6:37

And how different was it from the Brussels studies?

Gaël 6:40

Well, in Brussels, or any big university you can go - ULB is pretty big - is you can go or not, it doesn't make a difference for them. And you can listen in class or not, it doesn't make a difference. Here, the university being smaller - Belval was not done yet, we were in the campus of Walferdange at the time - you had a very direct contact with your classmates, with your teachers, and as well with the people that oversaw the program. So that kind of keeps you interested. My experience here is that since you could talk to everybody, and they were very open to students coming up to them, that made it much more interesting to come every day to every lesson, every class. Because a lot of people, when they go to university, they go to party a little bit and then maybe they don't show up for two or three days.

Masti 7:44

Are you speaking of experience here?

Gaël 7:47

I won't answer that. [laughs] Yes a little bit, a little bit.

Masti 7:53

Coming here to a smaller university, kind of starting up and growing, what were you expecting?

Gaël 8:01

To be honest, at the time, it was more about the situation at all. What I wanted was to get my degree and the circumstances ended up being great. It's kind of a luck kind of deal. I had great teachers, great classmates, interesting lessons. To be honest, it's not always the case, everybody knows that. You can start something, if it's at university or before that in school, and go because you have to. This was not the case here. I f I take the best example I've ever had, there's always the four-hour lesson about statistics in the morning, that was in ULB political science: nobody made it through. Even the people that were really interested in statistics, they would never stay the four hours.

Masti 8:55

I think my brain would never be able to comprehend four hours of statistics, honestly.

Gaël 9:02

The latest research shows that we have maybe a span of attention of 25 to 40 minutes. The idea of giving class for three, four hours doesn't really make sense.

Masti 9:15

And how long did you stay here? Because I guess you were changing your studies probably in the middle of it?

Gaël 9:25

I stayed pretty much two years. I validated what I could validate because not everything was the same. University of Luxembourg was quite open as well to try to find a way that I wouldn't lose all the credits I had in Brussels. I validated almost a year and I had to do two more to get my bachelor's here.

Masti 9:48

Did you do your master's too?

Gaël 9:50

I started my master's here, in the European governance. Very interesting master's and it was going great. I was almost a year into it and then I got the offer from RTL. Then it was do I finish my master's or do I take this job at the biggest media company in Luxembourg as a journalist? Which at that point I knew I wanted to do.

Masti 10:20

Maybe it was even like fate that you ended up coming back to Luxembourg. Because having the job opportunity here, it worked well with you already being here too.

Gaël 10:30

Yeah, I don't know, I'm not much of a fate guy; but if you asked anybody in my family or my wife, she's very much a fate person, maybe it was. I just know that some things in life you just don't see coming, pretty much.

Masti 10:49

That's true.

University experience and career path

Masti 10:49

Did the BCE in History prepared you for the journalism and the job you now have?

Gaël 10:57

I have a very unpopular opinion on this. Except if you're going to be a surgeon or any kind of activity like that, I really think university is a good step for it to prepare. There's one side, I would say, of the studies that helped a lot, which is research and sources. To learn how to know that this is a source that's reliable, the other one is not. That is something that was pretty big here, or as well in ULB. That is probably the one side that I really needed to do my job today. For the rest, the classes, even journalism classes, are not going to prepare you for what happens every day at work. Any job that is not again surgeon or whatever, you will learn on the job. But these classes help you get to a point maybe where you can handle the stress, where you can handle the pressure, where you can handle also having lots of work. Because university is lots of work. But I don't really believe in the idea of this Master's is gonna make you the best ,at what you do.

Masti 12:07

I think you're 100% right on that. But I know that they have a few journalism courses and media courses, I'm just wondering if they help get an idea of what the actual journalism world looks like?

Gaël 12:24

In my case, it went pretty well. I did this media class and I participated in this project they had for the TV at the time. When I came to work there it was still there. The rédacteur en chef was Alain Rousseau. I think it really depends on who comes and shows you and who comes and explains that to you. You can get the best journalist out there but maybe he's not good at teaching, or maybe h e doesn't have time to show you around, or maybe it's not a priority for him. It depends. I can tell you five, six people that come from RTL that could give you a great class, and maybe 10 others that could not.

Masti 13:24

So it's a personality thing, of course.

Gaël 13:26

I think so, yeah.

Masti 13:28

So you did the master's in European Governance here, or started it at least. How did that affect you in your job?

Gaël 13:36

At the time, the goal for me was, more than anything, to get that master's degree. It was something I was interested in because one of the outcomes I was maybe thinking about was going into the European institutions. My dad was actually in the European Parliament for most of his life. That's why I chose European governance. On top of it, I also knew this was a topic I knew very well. To be honest, this was also the easy way to get a master's, I guess. That was the initial idea.

Gaël 14:11

Of course, as soon as you get into classes and you have debates and you have discussion, dissertations or anything, you of course see that's not just about that. How it helped me more than anything is to exchange with educated people and people that are interested about what's going on in Europe generally. I think this is something that's been kind of lost in translation the last 15 years, which I don't really understand.

Gaël 14:42

I'm old enough to have lived through Europe having borders and having to change your currency every time you went, for example, from Wasserbillig to Trier and you had to go to the Deutsche Mark. You had to prepare to that and you had huge waiting lines at the border because they had to stop everybody, etc. This is, of course, just a practical side of it. Just that, I think, would make people change their minds very fast. You see now with the border checks in Germany that people are so annoyed that they have to be in traffic all day, etc. But imagine that all day. That's the practical side of it. And let's not forget today, with all the international forces going the way they're going, if we were not a European Union, do you think we would be important at all in the negotiation table as just Luxembourg or just France or just Italy? I don't think so, and that's today - more than any other time - very important.

Masti 15:52

How different was it to get into the job from what you've experienced before? Like you just wrote things for your brother. In that case, people really liked what you did and you had your studies of course, since you started your master's. But how was it to actually step into the field?

Gaël 16:09

Super exciting! When I got the call from Le Quotidien, they asked me if I was interested in any sports, which I am and always have been, and they gave me an opportunity to work on some pieces about soccer, about rugby, about boxing. They just asked me which were the sports where I really knew my way around and they gave me some pieces here and there, at first. And then, when they saw that it was working out, I was working pretty much Wednesday to Sunday, every day with them. I have to say that the first day in the redaction, where all the journalists worked, was really, really exciting for me.

Masti 16:53

You said Wednesday to Sunday. What about Monday and Tuesday?

Gaël 16:56

Well, when you work in the sports world, nothing happens on Monday or Tuesday, except Champions League now. But if you have national leagues, they play generally Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So let's say volleyball, basketball, soccer, whatever sports it is, generally they play weekends. Logically because people work, because they have more time on their hands. And then sometimes it will work Tuesdays as well because of European championships. But that's something that has evolved a lot. I mean, I've been in the business now 12 years, and 12 years ago the Nations League didn't exist for example.

Masti 17:35

How was the workload starting off as a freshman in the field?

A day in the life of a journalist

Gaël 17:39

First it was quite light. They told me you'll go there on Thursday, you go there on Friday. We don't have much else this week. But it also has something to do with the fact that I started in the summer. Summer there's a kind of a break for Yeah, a lot of. The the first two months were a bit slow, I would say, and then, as soon as September came around, it started. I started to understand the pressure of getting something ready, because it's also a paper, so it had to be. You you had to have everything ready by. At 11, 11 if If your story was not ready, you were delaying everybody. So I can tell you then, especially when start, start like "okay okay, I need to do this.

Masti 18:28

Is it still paper or is now digital?

Gaël 18:30

They still have their paper. I think they're going more and more in transition into digital, from what I've heard. Because the people that used to work with when I was there, well not all of them are still there. But I know that digital is the way to go today, with the smartphones and everything. It's pretty well known that papers are losing audience, Yeah, especially when comes to people, like . Maybe, maybe that the people 50, are 60, 50 60 will always read . But, but I don't think it will be the case for anybody that was born with in their hands a smartphone.

Masti 19:04

true, in said there, you're not part of it anymore. So what are you doing now, exactly?

Gaël 19:13

Since I joined RTL, at first RTL was a little bit of everything. We were a small team so it was local news, international news, sports when needed to be done as well. As soon as the team grew, of course, then you could spend more time on the problematics that you thought were important.

Masti 19:34

Yeah, true, because you wanted to do political things in the beginning.

Gaël 19:48

Yeah, that was always the goal, of course. I don't want to make anybody angry, but the Luxembourgish political scene is less exciting than the American one right now, for example. Let me be clear, I'm not excited about Donald Trump at all, but there's so much going on and there's so much at stake. When you look at what's going on in politics in North America That yeah, looking at Luxembourg, you have to put in it in At, at point, some point I started working again on what I really wanted to work on. That, I would say, would have been two years job, john, . pretty Before much that, you. You had to build up a name, a website.

Masti 20:28

person that they actually acknowledge.

Gaël 20:31

Yeah, I mean, at first the names were not necessarily important because RTL was not big on signing. That has changed now. But it was more about becoming just one of the news outlets that people are following. From there on, you can maybe go more into depth and give them some real journalistic work.

Masti 20:55

And how can one picture what your everyday life looks like? Especially in times like now where we have, let's say, America you mentioned it already in the politics there, or even the latest things like the Pope that died. Tell us what a day looks like when there's so much happening in the world.

Gaël 21:13

That's actually what I love the most about my job is you never know, you have no idea. Yesterday, for example, I thought it was going to be quite calm and a day where I could organize, make some appointments for, for example, my show that I have, and maybe prepare some new stories and get creative. But in the end, I sat down - I cannot talk about it because it's still under embargo - but there's something coming up now today at five that I had to work on all day. Then, I had to be in charge of the information after nine which was Champions League mostly, and that also went much longer than it was supposed to. I started my day at 10 in the morning and ended at midnight.

Masti 22:04

Oh my god!

Gaël 22:05

This was supposed to be a chill day at work In the end, I worked pretty much non-stop. I did have a small break to have dinner with my family and then I kept on working.

Masti 22:19

Does that happen often? [Gaël laughs] You're laughing, that means yes.

Gaël 22:26

Six years ago, I would have told you no. Now we're 2025. Pandemic happened, Ukraine happened, Gaza happened, Donald Trump happened. Now it's very, very, very common. It's very common that you have days like this. When I started in RTL, you knew for example that July was going to be slow. The administrations are closed, the Justice Department takes a break as well, the police is in fewer numbers. Even though they will never admit it, they're in fewer numbers. So you get less news, logically. There's going to be less to do, and that's also why people maybe will understand that, through that, you have those magazine pieces, those funny pieces, those pieces that are a little bit less news. They come up in the summer because then we have time to do them. We don't have time in September, January and right now, it's pretty random, it can happen at any time. I mean, somebody dying, that's something you can never foresee, of course. Now, it's very, very, very common that we have days that are crazy.

Masti 23:43

We, as a group here at the university, visited RTL not too long ago and I've experienced the building and how many people are actually involved in that. So, you as a journalist, is it really working alone or do you have a great team chemistry?

Gaël 24:07

It definitely helps if you have a good chemistry with your teammates or workmates. But I would say it depends on what you work on. If you work on radio, you can do a lot of stuff by yourself and you will do a lot of stuff by yourself, meaning preparing the show you have and talking to the people you're inviting on the show, preparing your story, your questions. Even doing the editing, you do it yourself. If you do a story that's just written, you're gonna do a lot of it by yourself as well, especially in digital. When you work for a paper, generally you always have a photographer that is with you but he stays normally 10, 15 minutes, so the rest of the job is yours.

Masti 24:58

It is up to you, yeah.

Gaël 24:58

Yeah, except sports events, etc. But even then, you will be around the field and you will be in the press spaces.

Gaël 25:12

I would say one place where it's really true, it's the TV and anything that's video. If you have any video or a camera involved, of course you need to work with a cameraman, you need to sometimes work with lighting, and after that you need to work with an editor. Then your story gets made by pretty much three to four different people. That's really teamwork. And what we're doing more and more - not just us, but everybody in the media - is doing those video reportages that go online straight away that don't necessarily need to go on TV first - because we do have the TV in Luxembourg, which is a big part of RTL. The way people consume the news today is more and more through social media. So, we have to do more and more video because people don't have the patience to read anymore..

Masti 26:07

No, they don't, mostly. You said that they reached out to you to have you there as a new journalist. I don't think that would be the case today, probably. Maybe if I were interested, I had to reach out to RTL to become a journalist.

Gaël 26:26

Yeah, I mean that happened with Le Quotidien. It was kind of luck, I would say, that somebody read me and said "we need somebody, so let's call him. With RTL, I saw an ad; they were looking for French-speaking journalists. I applied and did a few meetings with the old CEO, the CEO that was before the current one. He said, "you're coming to RTL and we're excited to have you. And that went actually pretty quickly, much quicker than I thought. I thought I could finish up my master's, so that was not in the cards at the time.

Masti 27:05

I would have asked if you regret not finishing your master's but, from what I've heard, you've been there for 12 years, so I think it's not as important anymore.

Gaël 27:15

It depends. I f I start something, I need to finish it. Even something stupid like a show, if I watch 10 minutes, even if I don't like it I'll finish it. I would like today still to finish the master's. The problem is the more you go in your profession - and I also have a son now and he's 18 months old - y You have less and less time to do these things. It becomes less of a priority but if I can, I'll finish it.

Masti 27:55

At the moment, where days can be crazy, how do you even manage to meet up with your family, have that time for yourself, combine a job and have it like balanced?

Gaël 28:07

I do something very bad, which is sleep less pretty much. I sleep less because then, when the little one is sleeping and I have done my day of work, I can spend some time with my wife. When she goes to sleep, I always call her a grandma" because she goes to sleep very early. Then, I have a little bit of me time.

Masti 28:31

Yeah.

Reporting on global conflicts

Gaël 28:31

Generally, if I don't watch the time, it can go on a bit too far in the night. So, I try to find a balance but yeah, I need to get better at sleeping more.

Masti 28:44

Would you say that journalism is overall more tiring than one could expect?

Gaël 28:49

I t really depends on how you work. I have co-workers that work more than me, and I'm a pretty hard worker. I have other co-workers that work much less, so of course it depends on how much pressure you put on yourself and how much pressure your boss puts on you as well, of course. It really depends on how you do your job. If you're really passionate about your job, which is the case for me, you tend to go over what you need to do, and then maybe lose a little bit of time; but I try to always keep time for family. But if you take it easier at work, then it's easier of course.

Masti 29:36

And you mentioned pressure quite often. How do you cope with pressure?

Gaël 29:41

I work very well under pressure. I've been a very good student most of my student life but I always work the same way, I waited till last minute. If I had a big test coming or exam, or even like dissertation of 20 pages, I would write it the day before.

Masti 30:04

Procrastination.

Gaël 30:05

A little bit yeah but, when when I got there and the pressure was on, no problem. The pages came flying. That's just the way work, no, I still do it the same way.

Masti 30:19

If it works then, why not. just wondering, because maybe there are people out there that really would like to become a journalist too, and maybe even thought of okay, signing at RTL. I just want them to kind a feel of what the workload can be like and what kind of pressure there can be, . From I've seen. on day we went to visit RTL RTL, never seen people that looked so calm and collected, even though everything was like on fire. There were so many news coming up and people had to work, but they looked like peaceful.

Gaël 30:54

Well, we're used to it. That's pretty much it. Maybe 10 years ago, it would have been a different scene. But we've had pandemics, wars, we had inflation, we had so many things happening that, to be honest, now the death of the pope was easy to handle in comparison with, for example, everything closing down when the pandemic started. Because we ourselves, when it starts, don't know where we're going. We're just getting information from everywhere and we're trying to give it to the public as clear and as fast as possible. Pressure can be very, very high. If you go into journalism, you shouldn't expect to be sitting around and doing nothing, then you need to find some other type of job.

Masti 31:57

You said you were good with pressure. However, before starting, maybe you had different expectations. Did you really expect all the things that happened that way?

Gaël 32:03

I went into it, kind of a blank page. I said let's see what happens and I was not disappointed. The pressure was on but, at the same time, I got quite lucky. Especially with my bosses in the early times of my career. I had people that would put pressure on you but constructively. Not try to make it hard for you to work but tell you this needs to be done, and you need to be ready, you have until 11. Then you start organizing your day and organizing what you're going to write first, what you're going to start with and what you need to do last minute, because you have no other choice. And that's one thing which I love about it, and some people hate it. You'll have a lot of moments where you have to wing it, I mean you cannot see so many things coming.

Gaël 32:58

Something trivial like yesterday, everybody thought the game between Inter Milan and Barcelona is over. It's over, Barcelona has won, and what happens? They score last minute. You go into overtime, maybe then they score again. Then they scored again, then maybe Barcelona scores again, then you go into penalties. You thought maybe your day was going to be done at 10, well it's done at 12, and that's trivial. But imagine you put this into perspective, into the political perspective. Yesterday, there's kind of a war that started between India and Pakistan. And that happened at the same time. You need to handle it as well. We are lucky to have some tools that help us, like international agencies. Everybody uses them and pays for their services. Le Monde as well, which is to me one of the references that helps at that point. But then you have to look into it from the Luxembourgish perspective, you cannot do it straight away.

Gaël 34:01

Y ou got to think about other Pakistanis in Luxembourg. Are there Indians? How many? How are they impacted by this? Are there visa problems? Are they here this and this? Can they recall people to go into the army, for example? These are things that come up , you when this comes up know when you have experience in those things, you know what's going to come . down And and how much work is going to come from it as . well

Masti 34:30

I'm just curious - when you hear like something like that happened, you're automatically thinking this is going to be a very long day, just by the news. You just call your wife saying "I'm not coming home for dinner tonight.

Gaël 34:47

That has happened. The good thing, the one good thing about the pandemic is that it became a bit more -

Masti 34:53

Flexible, probably.

Gaël 34:55

Yeah, all of the employers became more flexible with homeworking. When these things happen and it's, for example, Champions League, you can then finish your day at home. That's possible, it's doable, depending on what you do. The TV presenter has to be in the studio, he has no other choice. But if it's for the online news website, you can do that part of the job from home. Where you need a studio, where you need a recording system or cameras, of course you need to be there, present.

Masti 35:46

I'm also curious about what is maybe one job you had as a journalist

Gaël 35:53

Most of the time, I am really happy when I am done with a piece. But lately, I would say the piece I did about the war in Gaza. I was in contact with the Coordinatrice d'urgence from MSF that's been deployed there for weeks and doing a story about what's going on there, with how much we can actually do. Because they don't let journalists into Gaza anymore. The ones that are still there, they were there from the start and they cannot go out either. So what we get is pretty much information from people that are there. We cannot do ourselves. I would not mind going; a lot of people find that weird and dangerous, but that's the -

Masti 36:37

The thrill probably.

Gaël 36:39

No, but it's also why I got into journalism as well. I don't want to be doing fluff pieces, I want to do pieces that matter. Maybe that's why I would tell you, for example lately, I would say the piece on Gaza I did, I am very happy about how it turned out.

Masti 36:56

That's also the part where we can rephrase what you said about actions speak louder than words.

Gaël 37:02

Of course, and today we can see that with the international community not lifting a finger in Gaza and in this conflict. We know why, it's not a secret anymore. The only reason Israel can do what they're doing without having problems with Europe, or any other nations in the world, is because the United States stand behind them. Nobody really dares to confront them. What's happening in Gaza is absolutely horrible.

Masti 37:38

How do you, with such a big conflict, do journalistic work around that?

Gaël 37:44

The biggest challenge we have is, of course, that we cannot go to Gaza, we cannot be in there. Anyways I think a lot of media outlets wouldn't send anybody because there's a very big chance we won't come back, with the strikes being done the way they've been done. There's enough reporters have died already, and even humanitarian workers that have died. So, that already shows the problem in Gaza. And to do a complete piece, I would say you would have to be there, with cameras, with everything you need. But the problem is in conflict zones, if you record the wrong thing - it doesn't matter if Israeli or Hamas - you might end up dead and they will never come out to the light.

Gaël 38:34

So, we have to trust the people that represent honest organizations like, for example, Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). You have to trust them because you don't really have a choice. And the numbers, I think, speak for themselves. Nobody's saying that the attack on Israel was not horrible, but I think the answer has been disproportionate. Completely disproportionate and absolutely kind of forgetting about the fact that Gaza is a place where people lived. It's not full of terrorists that want to harm the world and Israel. It's families, it's kids, it's mothers, it's men. I forget to mention them a lot, but I mean I think the latest numbers were 53 000 dead, and that's without counting the people that they have not found in the rubbles. That in itself already speaks to the conflict. Of course, if you wanted to do a complete journalistic work, you would have to follow Hamas, you would have to talk to Hamas, you would have to follow the Israeli forces... Would they ever agree? I don't think so, one or the other side. The question is if you, for example, talk about the comments, I see them as well. I think, most of the time, it's people that are first of all not informed. Second of all, they're biased.

Masti 40:17

But they're also biased because, I think journalistic work can be very good, but people are biased because of what they read and it also depends on the sources, of course.. A new new question that pops up in my head is: for you, is it important to make things clear so that the person who reads your article can be assured? People it's hard to say. Because people will be biased anyways, whatever you put out, but maybe to have an overview where they can rethink their positions.

Gaël 41:01

Whatever as objective as it's as possible. but let's, let's be Let's objectiveness is it's, it's Yeah, most of Most already, if interested in a subject, you're already not subjective anymore. That's a big talk actually that you can in RTL, that you can have with anybody that has written anything down ever. If you choose to talk about Gaza, it's because you're interested in Gaza. And why are you interested in Gaza? It's because you have your own opinions bias or opinions,, your own .. we can do to bring some level of information is pretty much to talk about the facts. And it's not disputed. The number of dead is not disputed by Israel at all and I think. not disputing it because they probably know that it's much higher. All that already speaks for itself. But of course, when

Gaël 41:55

I write my article and when I prepare my TV report because - it report, on TV and. try to TV, as objective as possible but when I talk when and that's also something. That's you can do to show people we're really trying to give you information from there, from neutral standpoint. I mean, MSF is As for MSF Israeli on the ground injured or if there's a Gazawi on the ground Gazan, they will treat them both. They are neutral. with a they perspective tell you what they're doing in Gaza is ethnic cleansing, I would think it's pretty hard to refute. Because, again, this is not a political party, this is not.

Masti 42:45

They don't have to be biased.

Gaël 42:47

No, they come to help the civilians, and sometimes also soldiers, that are injured. Anybody that's injured, they will go and help. The images that we saw a few weeks ago with these ambulances stopping to try to help people and they get shot, for example. It shows that they will go and help whatever happens. And then they get shot, that's another discussion altogether. But yeah, we try to stay as objective as possible, but the facts, they're not disputed, they're there. And from there, you can make your own opinion, of course. We're not telling you you need to believe everything but as you do in France, you have medias that are from the left side of politics, medias that are from the right side. That's not the case here, for example, everybody tells you you need to be as objective as possible in Luxembourg. That's the way it is; in Germany as well. They're also built in all those but, at least, they're trying to be objective. In France, Liberation is leftists, we know that. Le Parisien is from the right, we know that. Then, you can also go and take the information from one media and the other and compare it. Nobody's stopping you and nobody's saying we have the absolute truth all the time. This is a matter that's going on top of it. Very, very probably, in 20 years, when we talk about this conflict, the numbers we were given today were wrong?

Masti 44:25

Because you mentioned that this is the work you're most proud of, right? How long does this kind of work take to prepare?

Gaël 44:34

That one was also a surprise, kind of. I was trying to set up a meeting with this representative of Doctors Without Borders and she was supposed to get back to me in the following week. Because Gaza is a war zone, very simply, and they have to move a lot, they have to avoid strikes and they have to find a way to find internet as well. Which is not easy, especially since they rely on gas to have any type of electricity there. The gas has been blocked now for 60 days, I think, by the Israeli. Gas and food and everything has been blocked. Again, it's not the media saying it, it's just what's happening at the border which was documented, showed, recorded, and they have their reasons. Hamas says they have the other reasons, that's something else.

Gaël 45:27

In the end, I was talking to the representatives of MSF in Luxembourg and they just went like, can you interview her in five minutes? I replied "ok, let me find a studio that's free and let's go. And in the end, something that was going to take a week took an afternoon, I would say. I mean Gaza is something I've been following so now, I don't need to do all the ground research. It's done already, so to write it was faster. Let's say it took two afternoons all together with the editing and everything together. So yeah, it's part of the job. It was supposed to happen the week after, in the end we did it very fast and it came

Masti 46:13

Unexpected of the job.

Advice for aspiring journalists

Masti 46:19

To refer it back to students, what would you say to people that are interested in writing, maybe like it a lot, and are interested in joining journalism? What is your advice for them?

Gaël 46:33

Read. This is the advice I was given at the time and I didn't really follow it. During my career, I read a lot of great journalists. French, American, Luxembourgish, doesn't matter. It does help you see how they put information forth. What's, in your eyes, the most efficient way to talk to the audience as well. One of the biggest problems we're having right now is to get them to listen and to want to inform themselves. Social media has taken over so many aspects of our lives that people actually get their information from social media and from Instagram comments and I don't even want to start on TikTok. I would say read, read a lot what you like to read, but read. Stay in touch with what's going on if you want to be in any type of journalism. You can do sports journalism, you can do cultural journalism, that's not at all the problem, but then you need to know what's going on. If you let it go for a long time, you're going to be completely flooded with information as soon as you start any type of story. It's kind of logical. I t's like, during your studies, you didn't do anything for six months and then you want, at the last moment, to start learning everything everybody learned in six months, you're gonna have a problem. So read, keep yourself informed, in touch with what's going on, and try to find one thing you're really passionate about. Because that's going to be a possibility down the road. Maybe, at the start, you will do something you like less because they need a journalist in sports, and you're not really a sports person but you know how to write, you know how to report. You can start there and maybe later become a housing specialist.

Masti 48:43

Yeah, like you did. So you say, if you have the skill set, you can kind of put it onto every kind of topic?

Gaël 48:51

Yeah, I believe so. Of course it takes experience, you will have to experience how it goes, how it works as well, not every media outlet works the same way; but as soon as you have the basics, you can pretty much write about anything if you're interested. If you're not interested, it's always the hardest part. If you give me Tour de France tomorrow, I will not be good. I will not be good at writing, I will not be good at reporting because I'm not interested at all. That, of course, is a problem. But when you start, that's my point of view, you take what's there.

Masti 49:29

Yeah, that's what I thought too. One last thing: you were in Brussels, then you came to Luxembourg, but did you do any kind of exchange?

Gaël 49:39

Yes, I went to Berlin. That actually was part of the two years in Luxembourg. I did an Erasmus in Berlin which was amazing, I still love that city. I met so many great people there and again, this was a different experience. Freie Universität Berlin is also one of those huge universities; if you don't show up, nobody cares. So you have to hold yourself accountable. Otherwise, you will do nothing for six months, which is the case for a lot of Erasmus students and I understand them. I do have today a view on the university time that is you should figure out what you want. And if it takes one more year, two more years, do it. It doesn't matter.

Masti 50:28

You mean, you shouldn't care about how long it takes you in university, just try to find out what thing you're good at?

Gaël 50:37

Yeah. I think, by the way - that comes back to your question before - that's where university is great. It will help you figure out what you want, one way or another. It can be your classes, it can be your teachers, it can be somebody you meet, it doesn't really matter. But that's also kind of the beauty of a campus, I think, is that so many things can happen without you even expecting it. That's why I think, in my eyes, the university step is critical to jump into professional life later. Of course, there's people that have shown that they didn't need university to succeed. We have so many startups, we have so many Microsoft guys and etc... that never finished the university studies. Good for them! But I'm sure they met people that helped them down the line through their first experience there, or gave them an idea.

Masti 51:37

And they probably did go to university.

Gaël 51:40

Yeah, for most of them they did.

Masti 51:43

I hope you enjoyed this episode of Alumni Stories. If you want to get in touch with our guests, are interested in applying or need more details about the Bachelor of European Culture study program here at the University of Luxembourg, check out the description of today's episode, where I've added all the information you'll need. That's all for now, but we'll be back soon, and I hope you will be too Maybe even soon on campus.