Aaron Weintraub majored in Journalism and minored in Arabic.  Shortly after graduation he moved to Amman, Jordan to work with Collateral Repair Project [CRP], creating videos for their end-of-year campaign. As he became more comfortable as a videographer and video editor, he began freelancing more, transitioning from writing, which was his primary focus in college. In 2018 he began directing a mini-documentary, Class X, for news outlet Syria Direct. The film focuses on two trainees, both of which were media advocates in the Syrian conflict, their reporting work at Syria Direct, and their struggle to obtain more objective journalistic practices. He has also started the Collateral Repair Podcast with some of his friends at CRP, featuring interviews with refugees about specific topics and situations they may experience. He currently lives in the Jabal Amman neighborhood in the center of the city, in a small apartment that features ants in places that may surprise you.

How has the study of Arabic been important for your life and career?

Beyond just living in Amman and getting around socially, my work with videography and journalism here depends greatly on my Arabic-speaking abilities. My entire interview process hinges upon me being able to understand and translate questions into Arabic. Even if the interview is in English, there are more complicated sections that may need to be translated in order to get the full point across. The success of such interviews varies but certainly in the past year there’s been immense improvement. Journalism as a field is starting to recognize the importance bi-lingual reporters, particularly in multimedia storytelling. The most important skill I’ve picked up in the past year is turning over subtitles as quickly as possible.

While some of the larger and more established outlets do use English speaking reporters with more reporting experience in favor of finding journalists with lingual and cultural roots in a particular region for their storytelling (which I’ll diplomatically say is disheartening), this is certainly not the future. I’ll avoid going on a rant about social media and simply state that the overall trend of high-quality photo/video/audio technology has become more affordable. To state simply, more stories in areas that wouldn’t necessarily merit that much attention are broken with cell-phone footage, and that’s not going away. What will go away is a reliance on reporting personalities that may not have a vested connection to the country, city or neighborhood they’re reporting on, and the root of such a connection is almost always shared language.

What has learning Arabic, living in the Arabic world, meant for your growth as a person?

            I’ve had to listen to some of the most harrowing stories I’ve ever heard since coming out here. One of the first interviews I had in Amman was at Collateral Repair Project with a Syrian man who was having visa issues because he had been forced to link up with a local faction of the Islamic State. When he attempted to escape the first time, he was tortured and finally managed to flee to Amman. By then, his family, which had made it into Jordan before he was forcefully recruited, had been relocated. At the time of my interview with him. his second child had recently been born in Canada and he has still not been able to see her. While such stories are difficult to listen to, they serve as a reminder that if media outlets do not exist to share these experiences, the world isn’t going to have any understanding of what refugees go through before reaching Jordan and once they’ve made it to Jordan.