column
star-Columnist Nico Fried reports from the other side of column writing. Why citizen payments and articles from politicians are not enough.
This time I want to write the column about writing the column. The reason for this is that I didn’t think of or notice anything this week that seemed appropriate for the column. That’s why I thought about the fact that I don’t have a topic. And so I suddenly had a topic.
It is not, as you might think, that over the course of the week I simply select the best idea from three ideas that the editorial team has collected with dedication, thoroughly researched, classified historically and neatly laid out on my desk and then Stroke a few thoughts into the keyboard with a light hand. Rather, the search for a new topic usually begins the moment the last column is finished. This never ends.
This search for a topic is a constant companion throughout the week. And through the next one too. And so forth. The search sits in its usual place in a niche of my brain and evaluates every conversation, every reading and every other experience to determine whether it is suitable for a column or not. This search has already ruined my weekends and robbed me of sleep. It only knows the categories usable and unusable, it divides my entire life into yes and no. The worst thing is when a topic seems suitable, but even after two hours of frantic thinking, my thoughts on it only last for two and a half paragraphs. Then everything starts again from the beginning.
A summary of the week
Take, for example, the article that two prime ministers and one who wants to become prime minister wrote together about the war in Ukraine. Michael Kretschmer, Dietmar Woidke and Mario Voigt published an appeal in the “FAZ” to the federal government to make a more visible commitment to a ceasefire and negotiations between Moscow and Kiev. There would be nothing wrong with that if the authors’ actual purpose wasn’t to curry favor with Sahra Wagenknecht, whose party all three of them depend on to form a government. Of course that’s not in the article, but it still jumps out at you when you read it.
But the obvious is an enemy of the column. When everything is clear, there is nothing left to say. Then another topic dies for the column. It’s similar to making a funny incident the subject of a gloss. Writing funny things about something funny almost always goes wrong. Glosses only about serious topics.
Where did the two of us go this week, the search for a topic and me? For example, with the one-off 1,000 euros that citizens’ benefit recipients will receive in the future as soon as they have had a regular job for a year. A huge upset for many, but not for me. If it motivates people, I think that’s a good thing. In the end, the state even saves money.
There was immediate opposition to this from the Union, which, as is well known, also includes the CDU, whose leader Friedrich Merz had just demanded that Germans’ attitudes towards work and prosperity must change. About the amount of money he has earned outside of politics, Merz said that he was not ashamed of it: “Nothing fell from heaven, I worked for it. And I may have worked more than eight hours a day.”
More than eight hours a day? It sounded to me as if Friedrich Merz had also written columns.
Source: Stern
I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.
