Interview
In an interview with Shirzanan’s family
The tale of women’s sports reporting
Shirzanan: Fereshteh Movahed /translated by Roja Najafi: Shirzanan is the first Iranian women’s sports magazine that has changed many things in the sports world in Iran: for one thing now the sports officials know that there is a special magazine covering the news of women’s sports; it won’t hesitate to uncover the authorities mistakes and it portrays the comments of Iranian women athletes.
Although in Iran women’s sports were always in the margins of the society and there are not much attention on it, it is not an easy job to make reports on women’s sports in Iran. There are paperwork, regulations and change daily and many other obstacles that one can believe it is created, only, to keep us away from reporting. Here is an interview with Shirzanan’s group of journalists.
How did you hear about Shirzanan?
Shabnam Shakorian: couple of years ago I was a reporter for Iran News agency in and my boss introduced me to Solmaz Sharif.
Maryam Majd: I had worked on a project about Women’s Bus. I had the photos on my blog. Latter on I got an email from Solmaz who had seen my photos. She offered me the job. I was very excited.
Taraneh Poustchi: I was Solmaz Friend for many years and now I am helping her with public affairs.
How do you evaluate Shirzanan’s work in media?
Shabnam: Shirzanan gave a face to many of the women athletes; as if Shirzanan made them visible for people. Also it made other newspapers and media to state covering women’s sports.
Maryam: Shirzanan is very unique; I know many people through Shirzanan. And our audiences are all very supportive.
Taraneh: Many people did not know that Iran have professional female athletes or if women’s sport in Iran exists; Shirzanan has changed that.
How do you see Shirzanan’s last year performance?
Shabnam: I think we did a great job. Everyone knows baout us, officials, athletes and people. When I try to contact people for the job they actually recognize Shirzanan’s name and they help.
Maryam: we introduced many female athletes to our readers: I think this is an advantage of having an online magazine.
Taraneh: We should get better in many thing, but in its one year performance Shirzanan did great.
Maryam how do you see the women’s sports photography?
Maryam: there are many photographers who love to work on women’s sports because it sells. Because of the Islamic outfit the Iranian female athletes wear the photos are attractive to international audience. This approach is misleading many photojournalists and I am against it.
Taraneh how is Shirzanan’s public affair office doing?
Taraneh: Because we do not have an office it is hard especially this make other public affairs offices to not take us seriously. It happened many times that we scheduled a visit with them and then they canceled it without letting us know. Of course it is not the case with all of them.
Shabnam Shakorian interviews fereshteh Movahed
Fereshteh how did you get to know Shirzanan?
Fereshteh: I was not wih Shirzanan from the beginning; Maryam Majd introduced me to the group.
How do you see Shirzanan as a magazine? And in the past year?
Fereshteh: I think Shirzanan is a groundbreaking magazine; it is new in Iran but many know abou it. I have heard men envy us in having a special women’s magazine. I think at the beginning we were more like other magazines with the same cliché style. But later on we started to be more goal oriented: portraying not only the news but also the criticism regarding women’s sports. We are getting better every week.
