Member of the month | March 2015
Posted on Friday, March 6th, 2015 by ATC in Network of Skills with No Comments
Get to know our new member of the month, Thomas Lestavel.
– Could you tell us a little bit more about your career so far and your specialisms?
– I am a bit of a strange beast in the world of journalism! I am originally from Lille and studied business at HEC Paris before starting my career in finance. In 2007-2008, I worked for the BNP Paribas banking group as part of a team at the loan trading desk in New York. Suffice it to say that I experienced the financial crisis from the inside and could see what was wrong with the system.
That experience gave me pause for thought. I returned to France and as I felt that my career in the financial services was now pretty meaningless I decided to become a journalist – my childhood dream, in a sense. I specialise in economic topics. I really enjoy working freelance – I’m in charge of what I do and I have the opportunity to tackle lots of different subjects on a variety of platforms: magazines such as ‘01Net’, ‘Le Parisien Magazine’ and ‘Alternatives Economiques’, TV broadcasts such as ‘Docteur Cac’ on France 5, or the latest stock market news on Radio Classique and RFI. I travel abroad at least once a year to report on different topics. Last year I went to Istanbul and New York.
I also work as a translator, mainly from English to French.
– For how long have you been a member of the agency?
– Since July 2014. First as a journalist, and then I started translating as well.
– Where does ATC place what you write?
– I write articles for Bluewin.ch and translate for Reuters and Yahoo! I had the opportunity to translate advertisements for films and some small video news reports. Translating from spoken English is quite tricky but can be a fascinating job. Sometimes you have to be pretty creative and resourceful if you want to relay what the jargon means. I am a fan of Christopher Nolan and was particularly delighted when I had the opportunity to translate an exclusive document on ‘Interstellar’ before the film was released.
– What would you say to persuade other people to join the ATC network?
– I like the way they work. The Newsroom is intuitive and very useful as a tool. As a journalist, I often work with newspapers which are not very clear about what they want – they change their minds while you are putting together a news report or even once it is finished, or they might suddenly change their angle or deadline… At ATC everything is crystal clear, and I like that.
Also, bluewin.ch deals in very broad topics, and that gives me the opportunity to move away from my usual subject, the economy. I recently wrote an article about the real meaning behind the word ‘jihad’ (inspired by the film Timbuktu). That article was on a topic really close to my heart, and yet none of the media that I normally work with would have taken it.
Blog: thomaslestavel.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/thomaslestavel
Twitter: twitter.com/lestavelt
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