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03-01-2021, 01:05 PM
Vladimir Drkulec

FIDE newsletter
Welcome to the FIDE newsletter

Welcome to the FIDE Newsletter #26. This issue marks one year since we launched this new, email-based newsletter, so we went through all previous issues to analyze their content and provide you with some figures. We share some exciting news from India, as well as a brief report on the Armenian Championship. We announce a revamped program for School Instructor seminars, and we have a look at two initiatives to use chess as a therapeutic tool in autism and ADHD. Lastly, we include a brief review of a book recently published about the 4th FIDE President, Fridrik Olafsson.
03-01-2021, 01:07 PM
Vladimir Drkulec

First anniversary of the FIDE Newsletter

This is the issue number 26 of our fortnightly Newsletter. That means 52 weeks, or a complete year. We are very happy to see this project consolidated, with almost 9,000 subscribers as of today, 1st of March 2021. During this time, we have published 192 brief articles, totalling 63,250 words - an average of 2,400 per issue. An anniversary is always a good occasion to look back and do some self-evaluation, and that’s exactly what we did. We went back through these 26 issues and prepared a brief summary and content-analysis. To begin with, we started with who/what is the subject of our articles. As is to be expected, most articles are about FIDE itself (38%), with an additional 8% of news devoted to the different FIDE Commissions. However, we also make an effort to give as much visibility as possible to the activities of our Member Federations (31%).

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BREAKDOWN BY SUBJECT:
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In total, we have published news about 63 different Member Federations, as listed below:

FEDERATION: ITEMS:

USA 10 Angola 1

Russia 9 Argentina 1

England 8 Bangladesh 1

India 7 Belarus 1

Netherlands 7 Cape Verde 1

China 6 Denmark 1

Spain 6 Dominican Republic 1

Poland 5 Fiji 1

Serbia 5 Greece 1

Croatia 5 Indonesia 1

Ukraine 4 Iran 1

Georgia 3 Isle of Man 1

Germany 3 Italy 1

Switzerland 3 Latvia 1

Turkey 3 Mozambique 1

Armenia 3 Pakistan 1

Australia 2 Philippines 1

Belgium 2 Portugal 1

Colombia 2 Puerto Rico 1

Czech Republic 2 Romania 1

France 2 Scotland 1

Ghana 2 Singapore 1

Hungary 2 Slovakia 1

Iceland 2 South Africa 1

Ireland 2 Sweden 1

Kazakhstan 2 Trinidad and Tobago 1

Lithuania 2 Tunisia 1

New Zealand 2 Uganda 1

Norway 2 Uzbekistan 1

Sri Lanka 2 Uzbekistan 1

Togo 2 Wales 1

UAE 2

The breakdown by topics shows that, while chess competitions are still the most common news, they only take up to 44% of the published items. We have tried to keep a very balanced content, with 10% of our space going to seminars and courses, 9% to divulge social initiatives, 8% to women in chess, 7% to chess in education, 6% to chess history, and 6% to culture and entertainment.

BREAKDOWN BY TOPIC:

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Quoting from our recently approved CSR guidelines, “[FIDE will] make use of our social media channels to give visibility to women in chess, providing young girls with role models who can inspire them”.

We decided to check how well are we performing in this chapter, and we analyzed how many men and how many women were mentioned in these 26 issues of the newsletter. The result is that during this year, 691 men have been mentioned, against 252 women.

BREAKDOWN BY GENDER:

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27% is definitely far from total equality, but the figure is satisfactory considering that women only amount for barely 15% of registered players in most federations. We can safely say that women’s activities are slightly overrepresented in our publications, compared with their actual presence in total chess activities. And we hope that, in turn, this little extra visibility will encourage more women to engage.

What have been your favourite articles during the year? What topics are you missing in our newsletter, and what would you like to see? Feel free to send us your feedback using the email newsletter@fide.com.