Christophe Gleizes, Profession Reporter – Freedom of the press

It is a scene to which any journalist from the editorial staff of So Foot and Society could have attended between 2013 and 2024. Christophe who landed in the office at 3.30 p.m., pointed shoes on his feet, down jacket tired in all times – because there is no season with him -, cigarette in the beak, debonary smile, playful, with a daring proposal: « Eh if a quick ! Wouldn’t you like to go to Scotland with me? I have a great idea of ​​a subject. A story of dogs that commit suicide from a bridge next door from Glasgow, ça a l’air fou ! » Obviously, in the spring of 2015, his interlocutor agreed to follow him in this amazing adventure which, as often, starts with a short night in his little apartment in the 13th^e Paris district before taking a flight at dawn.

Then, on the field, in impeccable English, Christophe has no equal to wander on the trace of the good character to interview, from the right scene to describe, open doors, meet and unlock situations that seem compromised thanks to his Bagou, his kindness and his empathy. In this case, in the country of Sean Connery, it was a question of convincing women, bereaved by the loss of their dog, of engaging when they had already undergone the mockery of journalists of English tabloids a few years earlier, while stirring a dark story of haunted manor and bridge touched by the curse for two centuries. The six -page report was published in a issue of Society In the summer of 2015 and traces what is still, alongside the Monster du Loch Ness, the other “great mystery of Scotland”.

The good stories of “Gleizou”

Christophe set foot in the writing of So Foot For the first time when he came to do an internship there, in June 2013, when the offices still took up their place in an underground parking in northern 18th^e District of Paris. At the time, CELSA arrived, where he finished his studies, and has just published on his reporting site, entitled IPRESS, an article on drug addicts of the Gare du Nord. He sends it to two editorial journalists, who themselves have their own reporting site. The latter find him excellent, start to exchange with Christophe, sympathize and find themselves with him in a common way of considering journalism, namely a lifestyle which allows above all to meet the world and to go on an adventure. The two journalists transmit the article to the editorial staff of So Footand Christophe is recruited.

At the beginning of discreet, he quickly found a place he always dreamed of – “An island of freedom that allows you to make the journalism that I like and that resembles me”he explains. Christophe Gleizes then becomes “Gleizou” and, passionate about the field, begins his big trips, looking for good stories, especially on the African continent, where he lived as a child and for which he retains an intact fascination. Over time, some of his articles to So Foot will be a date: his investigation into the age trafficking of African players dreaming of European football in 2015; His long report on the municipal campaign of Bonaventure Kalou in his village in Côte d’Ivoire, in 2018; the can, too; Or the almost integrality of the number “100% Samuel Eto’o”, made in Cameroon in the summer of 2022. « If I owe something to so Press, cIt is to have allowed me to travel to Africa dozens and dozens of times. And that, I have really moved memories »he will say in Footthe podcast of So Footon May 23, 2024, a few days before his departure for Algeria.

He says it himself: his passion for report comes from afar, from childhood, and from Tintinwho has it “Many inspired” When he was young. “I had a little style at some point. And I have a small dog, moreover, recently ”he said again in the spring of 2024. As a teenager, he bought a collection of Albert London prizes which will never leave his Black Eastpak backpack and which he will continue to read and reread the texts, day and night. Christophe has an intuition: the long report, this kind of journalism, is also the one that best sticks to his human qualities. “I have a good contact, I have a head that makes people not be wary of me. I often manage to make them laugh, or put them in confidence. And often people prefer reporters to journalists ”he said. Sometimes he even let himself go to say that if the circumstances meant that he could no longer exercise the profession of reporter as he understood, he would simply stop. Since we know him, he has also caressed an almost impossible dream: approaching the island of North Sentinel, located in the Indian Ocean, where an isolated tribe lives that Western man has not rubbed shoulders since 1991.

Christophe does not like half measure so much. The proof: writing, in a second step, takes place exclusively at night, alone, on the small bar of its kitchen, with a cup of coffee, between two failures, and can end in the early morning. « By ironing dozens of times on each sentence to improve it. Without having the talent, it’s a bit like theFlaubertian Thode »he likes to declaim, in a laugh. Because Christophe often laughs. It is perhaps, moreover, what marks the most at home: Christophe is someone resolutely laughing, free, jovial, generous and playful, whatever the circumstances and the situations, capable of reciting a poem of Lamartine in the middle of the office or of cooking a whole fish in reporting in Vienna, at eight hours of the rendering of his article. This carelessness follows him everywhere. Including during the year that has just passed, then in full judicial control, in the WhatsApp messages which he intermittently sends to his friends and colleagues, to decramatize the moment and his loneliness, which he sometimes tried in this restaurant in Algiers where he had found “roasted camembert”-that had “gathered his morale”.

Football, failures and conquered audiences

Nothing is banal for Christophe Gleizes. Even less endure PSG. On this subject, he has been hosting the Champions League evenings organized by So Foot In the sacred, a Parisian nightclub, to defend his heart club. A sequence was even broadcast in an episode of the show Daily In November 2019, during a PSG-Real Madrid. He bursts the screen there with his low cost yellow sunglasses and his vintage jersey flocked with the RTL logo on his shoulders, facing a conquered audience. « When we had the idea of ​​organizing these evenings, at no time did the question of theidentityof the future animator. Inevitably, the mission was for Christophe. It takes you easily. At the end of the evening, I saw that people were lining up to greet him »retraces Maxime Marchon, former editor -in -chief and current director of development of So Foot.

Since Christophe is an obsessive man, he has another devouring passion: failures, a discipline in which he displays a classification of 1691 Elo Fide (International Federation of failures). He also managed to place an article in So Foot On the passion of footballers – like Hatem Ben Arfa or Marco Bode – for the King of Games. A discipline that he practiced frantically during his waiting year before his trial on June 29, in Algeria, where he went to report on the glory hours of the JS Kabylie club, to interview the coach of the Mouloudia Club of Algiers, Patrice Beaumelle, and to make a portrait of the Salah Djebaïli footballer. Before going in reporting with his backpack, he used to say that he liked to meet « facing a montagne. I like when there is pressure around my articles, when I know it will be hard. I always want there to be at least someone who does not want this article to be published ». One of those impulses of enthusiasm and legendary optimism that characterize it, as when punctuated “But are you sure your blow?” »» of this answer: « Yes my quiche, t ‘inquirinot. My reports, I always come back alive and with gear. »

To sign the petition calling for the immediate release of Christophe Gleizes launched by RSF and So Press.

Locked up for doing his job: our journalist Christophe Gleizes sentenced to 7 years in prison in Algeria