Clean your Desk
Noticed: The best editorial ideas are often buried at the very bottom of your desk. A spring cleaning can breathe new life into these "zombies.".
Column The best editorial ideas are often buried at the bottom of the desk. A vacation clean can bring the zombies back to life.Live fast, die young. That, Mbwana, is the most successful motto in show business. (Just ahead of Hollywood mogul Louis B. Meyer's tip for a good movie: "Start with an earthquake - and then slowly build up!" And Alfred Hitchcock's motto: "Always pay close attention to what the others are doing. And then do exactly the opposite!")Journalism is a sub-discipline of the show business, perhaps the most mundane and boring, but nevertheless. That's why it's a tragedy that journalists aren't beheaded at 40. Instead, they become department heads, editors-in-chief and permanent opinion columnists: what follows are 25 years in which the same show is varied day after day. Routine becomes senility. And live, in front of everyone.
A similar fate awaits me, Mbwana. I am 39, have learned nothing else and am too happy and too cowardly to commit suicide. So I've decided, if not to change my skin, then at least to change my office chair and quit my job at the weekly newspaper WOZ.
Now I'm tidying up the desk: Mountains of notes, prehistoric sandwiches and plans never followed through or implemented. Some of them are too good to be dumped directly in the trash, so I'm sending them there indirectly via your head. Thank you!
1) An editorial team hires clever and malicious professionals from the industry for a month, who criticize all articles on the same page. The consequences would be: 1) Everyone would write more ambitiously. 2. you would have something very rare in the house: a fiery quality debate. 3. readers would read the newspaper like crazy that month - first the criticism, and then the article, regardless of whether it was praised or slated: To see if the criticism is true. (Disadvantage of the plan: it requires a very self-confident editorial team).
2) In the Christmas edition, every journalist writes about where they were wrong last year and why: misjudgements are nothing dishonorable and are often more interesting than reality. (And finally, in the January issue, one could legitimately list the mistakes made by the competition - as a little treat for self-flagellation).
3) A newspaper like the WOZ has a great tradition. If you leaf through yellowed volumes, you often find shamefully well-written, amazingly up-to-date articles. Once you have digested the insult that good journalism was not invented by you, you could republish excellent old articles - with a researched box: What happened afterwards.
4) In general, a strategy should be developed that takes into account the lack of real news, primeurs and scandals: No news is good news! Readers love stories; only journalists are interested in primeurs. One of the most popular WOZ formats with the public is the cheer-up article: Being happy about a victory or angry at a defeat. No news, but the message: We empathize, we understand you!
5) Other plans: Basically write all comments as pro-con memos; a series on the rehabilitation of do-gooders as interesting minds (not only evil contemporaries are clever); telephone terror as a new journalistic genre; a series along the lines of "How do I convince my aunt to think left on this issue? Arguments for domestic use"; etc. pp.
So far, Mbwana, my landfill, which is now temporarily stored in your head. And now let's go on vacation!
> Constantin Seibt was editor for politics and economics at the weekly newspaper WOZ until today.
Constantin Seibt on the many ways to spice up texts in an original way.
A similar fate awaits me, Mbwana. I am 39, have learned nothing else and am too happy and too cowardly to commit suicide. So I've decided, if not to change my skin, then at least to change my office chair and quit my job at the weekly newspaper WOZ.
Now I'm tidying up the desk: Mountains of notes, prehistoric sandwiches and plans never followed through or implemented. Some of them are too good to be dumped directly in the trash, so I'm sending them there indirectly via your head. Thank you!
1) An editorial team hires clever and malicious professionals from the industry for a month, who criticize all articles on the same page. The consequences would be: 1) Everyone would write more ambitiously. 2. you would have something very rare in the house: a fiery quality debate. 3. readers would read the newspaper like crazy that month - first the criticism, and then the article, regardless of whether it was praised or slated: To see if the criticism is true. (Disadvantage of the plan: it requires a very self-confident editorial team).
2) In the Christmas edition, every journalist writes about where they were wrong last year and why: misjudgements are nothing dishonorable and are often more interesting than reality. (And finally, in the January issue, one could legitimately list the mistakes made by the competition - as a little treat for self-flagellation).
3) A newspaper like the WOZ has a great tradition. If you leaf through yellowed volumes, you often find shamefully well-written, amazingly up-to-date articles. Once you have digested the insult that good journalism was not invented by you, you could republish excellent old articles - with a researched box: What happened afterwards.
4) In general, a strategy should be developed that takes into account the lack of real news, primeurs and scandals: No news is good news! Readers love stories; only journalists are interested in primeurs. One of the most popular WOZ formats with the public is the cheer-up article: Being happy about a victory or angry at a defeat. No news, but the message: We empathize, we understand you!
5) Other plans: Basically write all comments as pro-con memos; a series on the rehabilitation of do-gooders as interesting minds (not only evil contemporaries are clever); telephone terror as a new journalistic genre; a series along the lines of "How do I convince my aunt to think left on this issue? Arguments for domestic use"; etc. pp.
So far, Mbwana, my landfill, which is now temporarily stored in your head. And now let's go on vacation!
> Constantin Seibt was editor for politics and economics at the weekly newspaper WOZ until today.
Constantin Seibt on the many ways to spice up texts in an original way.
