The first time that Maxi Palm It went to Pinamar to make radio was in 1999, although this is just a way of saying. That year Palma did everything except journalism: at the radio station where he got a job -and in this case the verb is not a way of saying it, because he himself called and insisted the owner of the occasion to hire him- he had to paint walls, move furniture, print flags and even make a transport trip to neighboring Madariaga on December 31 at the time of the fireworks. In fact, in that inaugural season he himself paid the ticket to the coastal city even without having any contract yet. “All my career I did based on the effort. I still remember the first time you told me about the channel that I was going to pick me up on a remis. I told them: ‘But if the 152 leaves me Bárbaro’ “.
Is that things happened since that through Radio del Plata He climbed the groups to go to the seasons with nothing more than hope in his pocket. Now Palma is a stable part of the Pinamar landscape, with its “Registered Marketing” space (name of its production company) on Avenida del Mar, the city’s waterfront. There the journalist, who – after 17 years at Fox Sports– today is one of the ESPN faces, he rehabilitated an abandoned corner and opened a place that today has a football court, a tennis football court and another soccer ping pong, and that throughout the summer offers free classes of different sports, for the youngest and for the families. In addition, something else happens in that place: the dream of Palma. “I paid the passage for five years to come and make radio here, and always my maximum illusion was a day to put a radio in Pinamar,” he says, as he points out the microphones from where he leaves his frequency, the FM 104.7, which also has a space for television transmission and that this season is the headquarters of the YouTube program that Influencers Nati Jota and Nico Occhiato.
Is that Palma is a rare Avis in the journalistic guild: the man opened his own producer, from which television, radio (in FM Milenium), has a web page, organizes sporting events and also makes communication to “El Klub ”, the esports organization of Sergio “Kun” Agüero.
Maxi Palm: I am in the mass and in the procession (laughs). I do not consider myself even close to a media star, mine is all work. He who grew up in a television corporation will never understand what is to pay for the food, sleep in the hotel lobby because you do not have to stop, or while in a coverage you all go to dinner you are 100 from mortadella and 100 cheese in a delicatessen because you don’t have a peso. I am an outsider of the TV, I entered big, at 30. I grabbed the last wagon of the last train and entered. I couldn’t believe that the canal would pay me per diem, when I was always used to paying myself with the money I gathered what I could, cover it, and then go out and sell it. In 1999 I took eight thousand dollars of debt to go to cover the Rugby World Wales. I was 23 years old and I thought that this could be the explosive World Cup for Los Pumas, I got into debt to go see where I could sell it. It was a great learning, because journalism is that, never stop learning.
News: Who is easier to carry? A TV star or a soccer player?
Palm: That’s a good question. I think that in both cases the issue is to administer the egos. That is why I consider myself an outsider in this world: I am, I work here, I am happy to be part of the environment, but my friends are my lifelong friends, my customs are the same as all my life, I have not changed them nor do I think do it. Tomorrow I have to go cover the worst soccer team in Argentina or go cover the World Cup in Qatar and I’m going to be the same, it doesn’t change me. Many journalists, many players, many actors, many politicians, when the tide arrives fame. It is difficult to manage egos, it is not easy for people to stop you on the street, for them to ask you for photos, to go morphing for free, to dress for free, it is not easy. The base to avoid that is education. I had a working middle-class family, parents who always gave me love and who taught me that the most important thing is family and friends. It is also true that there is a new paradigm in communication and that that changed everything. At 18 I wanted to work on television, today the kids no longer need television, they set up their YouTube channel and go out. Digital media democratized the possibility of work.
News: Is there a competition there? I remember Gustavo López’s debate with the streamer Ibai.
Palm: And yes, obviously. The player is also free to do what he wants to do. In the case of Ibai, he is also lucky to live in Barcelona, he hit it off with two or three players and the players watch, they say he was with Ibai and that’s why if he calls me I’ll go too. In the nineties I had a little program on a neighborhood radio where I paid for the space, and in that program I took out players from big teams. Today it is unfeasible that a player of mouth or some big leave in registered Marketing Radio Pinamar.
News: That closure of the player will have to do with something that is sometimes asked more of the sports journalist, which is more impartiality or being tougher.
Palm: In general, the sports journalist finds it difficult to ask very difficult questions. On the other hand, I must also say that the athlete’s defense against the press speaks of a professionalization of sport. Before, you went to drink mate at the player’s house, concentrated a big one and entered the hotel and crossed everyone and arranged the note there in the corridor. Now -and it happens in the shuffleboard, in tennis and in any sport- they are more professional, they work, they train, they think about what they have to do in their job, and attending to the press is part of their job, they have press teams that They manage the schedules. Before we were as badly used.
News: But doesn’t that deliver the idea of the journalist’s objectivity?
Palm: They are different schools. For example, I was always very critical of Maradona off the pitch, but I don’t know what would happen to me if I ran into Maradona, I was speechless.
News: Perhaps it has to do with the fact that football, unlike other fields followed by the rest of journalism, is connected to something more emotional.
Palm: Yes, but it also goes by, because you’re working. I think that the challenge of the sports journalist is to take off the shirt. We all have a past, we all went to a grandstand, we all cheered and we were fans. The great challenge here is to try to be objective.
