Purchased originality
Noteworthy: While writing about noteworthy events is a lucrative business, most journalists lack good ideas.
Column Writing is a lucrative business, but most journalists lack good ideas.Someone offers you a column, Mbwana? Well, columns are an unappealing thing. They were invented by editors-in-chief who didn't understand that personality, ideas and wit are everyday things, i.e. the business of the editorial office itself. And who therefore believe that originality can be bought in like spice for a soup. The rule of thumb is: the more columns, the less skill in the paper. On the other hand, Mbwana, a column is highly lucrative: it guarantees regular money. And without a lot of research. So say yes to column assignments. But avoid the pitfalls along the way.
The tricky thing about a column is the lack of resources; you should actually have an idea from time to time. But you only get ideas by quarterly subscription at best. And other resources are not enough. If you write about your private life, you will realize that you don't have one, at least not a really interesting one. You mostly sit in front of a computer. And if something really exciting happens, such as a divorce, you can't write about it. The result: you scribble harmless things and call yourself Mr. and Mrs. Baumann or Meier.
You will also see that your opinions are not enough. At most, you will have five or six passable opinions that are at the same time grounded in experience, genuinely passionate and reasonably new. The rest will be splatter (see the legion of chief editors, ex-chief editors and publishing directors).
So the dramaturgical problem of the column, Mbwana, is: no matter whether you are drunk, distressed, befuddled, you have to deliver the ideas you don't have week after week. The solution: you don't have to have the ideas, you have to simulate them. (Writing is the perfect medium for impostors: what I write in three hours, you read in three minutes. So my speed advantage is a factor of 60 - it's easy to look intelligent).
There's a trick to crafting the engine of an assembly line product like a column. You only need a single idea - right at the beginning: a clear package of tone, content and form for the column. Then you don't have to worry about much more than making sure a mediocre idea fits into the corset it's wearing. The rest is automation and filing. Martin Suter's Business Class column tells the same old story: a manager tries a career trick and stumbles over it. Or the lovely Eliane gives sex tips (the misfortune of others is exciting, it's exciting to see whether you would have guessed the same thing as Eliane). Or, for example, the satirical monster column in the WOZ, which I have been writing for over ten years: real names from politics and the media are mechanically transported into a trashy novel setting. If you choose the right tone, the column always works: the decline of the FDP in Buddenbrock's tone, Bishop Haas' fake doctorate as a doctor's novel, the pissing debate in the Council of States as an indecent poem - in no case is it a problem to come up with punchlines. One to three hours of work is enough.
Clever columns with the right tone-content-form package should be able to be written in a hat and coat in one to three hours after just a few weeks, otherwise the package won't be right.
A writer like Linus Reichlin, who needs a week and a top salary to write a column, is above all a negotiating genius. (Hello Facts, others will do the same for you for half the fee in a tenth of the time!)
This column here, dear Mbwana, is based above all on the combination of a highly impertinent and highly obsequious tone. It was written without inspiration in a gloomy mood (after all, I resigned from my employer after seven years), the fee is 300 francs, and it cost me an hour and fifty minutes.
> Constantin Seibt is still editor of the weekly newspaper (WOZ).
The tricky thing about a column is the lack of resources; you should actually have an idea from time to time. But you only get ideas by quarterly subscription at best. And other resources are not enough. If you write about your private life, you will realize that you don't have one, at least not a really interesting one. You mostly sit in front of a computer. And if something really exciting happens, such as a divorce, you can't write about it. The result: you scribble harmless things and call yourself Mr. and Mrs. Baumann or Meier.
You will also see that your opinions are not enough. At most, you will have five or six passable opinions that are at the same time grounded in experience, genuinely passionate and reasonably new. The rest will be splatter (see the legion of chief editors, ex-chief editors and publishing directors).
So the dramaturgical problem of the column, Mbwana, is: no matter whether you are drunk, distressed, befuddled, you have to deliver the ideas you don't have week after week. The solution: you don't have to have the ideas, you have to simulate them. (Writing is the perfect medium for impostors: what I write in three hours, you read in three minutes. So my speed advantage is a factor of 60 - it's easy to look intelligent).
There's a trick to crafting the engine of an assembly line product like a column. You only need a single idea - right at the beginning: a clear package of tone, content and form for the column. Then you don't have to worry about much more than making sure a mediocre idea fits into the corset it's wearing. The rest is automation and filing. Martin Suter's Business Class column tells the same old story: a manager tries a career trick and stumbles over it. Or the lovely Eliane gives sex tips (the misfortune of others is exciting, it's exciting to see whether you would have guessed the same thing as Eliane). Or, for example, the satirical monster column in the WOZ, which I have been writing for over ten years: real names from politics and the media are mechanically transported into a trashy novel setting. If you choose the right tone, the column always works: the decline of the FDP in Buddenbrock's tone, Bishop Haas' fake doctorate as a doctor's novel, the pissing debate in the Council of States as an indecent poem - in no case is it a problem to come up with punchlines. One to three hours of work is enough.
Clever columns with the right tone-content-form package should be able to be written in a hat and coat in one to three hours after just a few weeks, otherwise the package won't be right.
A writer like Linus Reichlin, who needs a week and a top salary to write a column, is above all a negotiating genius. (Hello Facts, others will do the same for you for half the fee in a tenth of the time!)
This column here, dear Mbwana, is based above all on the combination of a highly impertinent and highly obsequious tone. It was written without inspiration in a gloomy mood (after all, I resigned from my employer after seven years), the fee is 300 francs, and it cost me an hour and fifty minutes.
> Constantin Seibt is still editor of the weekly newspaper (WOZ).
