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Appointments at AFP - Didier Lauras takes over as head of sport
Former chief editor for France Didier Lauras has been appointed head of the AFP sports department, replacing Vincent Amalvy who has joined the sales and marketing department with responsibility for the Agency’s global sports strategy, major event organisation (the Olympic Games, the World Cup, the Euro Football Championship) and partnership development.
Didier Lauras, a graduate of CELSA and holder of a Master’s degree in political science, began his journalism career as a freelance in Ho Chi Minh City in 1993. He joined AFP in 1996 as a desk editor in Paris and was sent to the Agency’s Kigali bureau in 1997, three years after the Rwandan genocide.
He has also worked in the documentation department and covered the courts for the general reporting service. He has spent a large part of his career in Asia, serving as bureau chief both in Hanoi (2002 to 2007) and Bangkok (2009 to 2013). After returning to Paris he served as deputy sports editor from 2013 to 2014 and then as chief editor for France.
Vincent Amalvy, who holds a law degree, began his journalism career at the newspaper Sud-Ouest. He entered AFP as a photojournalist in Bordeaux in 1985 and joined the Paris photography team in 1992.
He was assigned to the Jerusalem bureau in 1995 and became head of the photo reporting team in France in 1997 and then photo editor in 2000. He was appointed head of the France-Europe-Africa photo region in 2003 and photo editor-in-chief in 2005. In 2006 he took over as photo director for the Americas, based in Washington, and was also given the role of organising photo coverage of major sporting events. He was appointed head of the sports service in 2011.
Sport is one of the Agency’s strategic priorities. The sports service has almost 150 journalists worldwide working in six languages: French, English, Spanish, Arabic Portuguese and German (via its subsidiary SID). It covers all of world football, the Olympic sports, motor sport (Formula One, rallies and MotoGP), rugby, golf, NBA and cricket. It also provides complete multimedia coverage of major events such as the Summer and Winter Olympic Games, the FIFA World Cup and the Euro Football Championship.
These two appointments are part of the implementation of a global strategy to strengthen AFP’s sports coverage on a global level.
About AFP
AFP is a global news agency delivering fast, accurate, in-depth coverage of the events shaping our world from conflicts to politics, sports, entertainment and the latest breakthroughs in health, science and technology. With 2,326 staff spread across almost every country, AFP covers the world 24 hours a day in six languages. AFP delivers the news in video, text, photos, multimedia and graphics to a wide range of customers including newspapers and magazines, radio and TV channels, web sites and portals, mobile operators, corporate clients as well as public institutions.