It was this time last year when I was at an impasse in my life. I was 33 years old and just like good ole’ Jerry, I was lost. I didn’t know what to do. Before this, I was an unemployed actor and T.V writer, before that, a soccer player and a coach.

And then, one late evening, my wife and I were watching Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” and I thought, “wow, he has a great job. All the traveling and eating. Discovering the world and getting paid for it!” But it was more than that. I began to realize that people, real people, with real stories, are truly remarkable. And more importantly, they have something to say. They want to tell us their stories. Just like Jerry, I had an epiphany. Breakdown? Breakthrough.

So, in November of 2014 I decided I wanted to become the Bourdain of sports. I wanted to go to communities and see how people used sports in order to better themselves and their neighborhoods. I wanted to collaborate with people and see how a game, any sport, unites them. I decided to shoot a short documentary and it would be about my true passion: soccer.

The moment I began to take my first steps I fell in love with soccer. Growing up in Peru, my father introduced me to the game and that love has grown ever since. I have vivid memories of being on his shoulders as I watched my first professional game. I remember my first goal, my first pair of cleats and the way a stadium smells on a cold February afternoon. I have not only played it at a high level, but I also coach it. I breathe, live and eat the game. It’s a miracle my wife puts up with me, to be honest.

So I gathered a good group of film-makers and we embarked on a 4-month mission to tell a story. The end result was THE FALL KINGS, a piece about a high school soccer team in NYC who succeeds despite many obstacles.

https://vimeo.com/119883933

The piece was eventually sold to Newsweek and it has received tremendous support from the soccer community. Since then my work has grown and grown. I have worked with Remezcla, a publisher that focuses on the Latino community and I have a reputable profile with The Guardian as not only do I write long-form articles for them but I am their very first and only Spanish sports live-blogger. I also created a website where I illustrate the good work of non-profit organizations around the world called FACES OF SOCCER. I have built relationships across different publishers and I am proud to say I have also developed a strong reputation as a soccer reporter, writer and documentarian. Not bad, for a kid who didn’t know one thing about journalism a year ago.

So what have I learned?

The challenge remains to educate the young person about what sports can mean. We still deal with a media fixated with “star” power and young people thinking of star athletes as demigods instead of people. Domestic violence, sex tape scandals, racism — they are all issues that keep showing up as a result of an industry driven by greed. We need to understand that we can do much more than just stats and highlights and tell real stories from real people. Derek Jeter’s Player’s Tribune is a great platform where professional athletes tell their stories as a way of humanizing their character. Grantland (when it was running) was wonderful journalism, a way of offering a unique way of talking about sports. I have taken all these platforms and their philosophies, combined it with the classes I have learned in social-j and created my own idea of sports reporting. Here are two key takeaways:

Transparency

I want to make sure my readers understand who I am as a reporter and what my thoughts are. That’s why my pieces have deep personal connections. I seriously believe that readers want to know about the writer as much as the story. This is a valuable way of getting trust and empathy within your community.

Don’t fear Social Media. Embrace it.

As a journalist, certain platforms can be a key tool of communication and discourse. As a sports fan and writer, I love Twitter because you can generate a conversation where once it didn’t exist. In fact, most editors, writers and publishers are way more responsive via these platforms than e-mail.

All this, however, would not have come true where it not for CUNY’s Graduate School of Journalism, their Social Journalism program and the amazing support I have received from these three people: the program’s original creator, Jeff Jarvis, my first ever professor in writing and reporting, Kathryn Lurie, and last but certainly not least: Carrie Brown. These three people influenced my work in such a tremendous way, I cannot speak highly enough of what they have meant to me. But the biggest hurrah goes to my classmates. My word, what an unbelievable group of people. I cannot tell you how passionate and dedicated they are towards the craft of journalism. They are fighting the good fight, believe me. Please check out their work, it truly is inspiring.

Social-j is more than just the relationship a journalist has with the digital world and social media. It’s about using our work as servers of the community. If we think about it, engagement can mean more than just commenting or sharing a piece. It can be about collaboration, communication and most of all: trust. Journalism is essentially about people, and how we — as people — can create a sense of service through communication. The beautiful thing about what we do, is that it keeps evolving, it keeps changing, because people change, communities change, behavior, values and ideas changes. This is more than story-telling or information. This is about creating bridges.

I am happy to be surrounded by bridge builders.

[P.S This was a mission statement. NOT a memo.]