After Yvonne Coldeweijer, will another important media woman call it quits? Angela de Jong is once again saying that she is ready for something different. And that could very well have something to do with Tina Nijkamp…
For years, Angela de Jong was the woman who dominated the TV debate with her spicy pieces in the AD. They were all angry with her: from Linda de Mol to Wendy van Dijk and from Gordon to Lieke van Lexmond. Hilarious of course, but lately the stars of our country seem more accustomed to her, and Angela seems to have softened a bit.
Tina drives Angela away
It happens more and more often that Angela’s pieces contain no nonsense and recently she suddenly delivered a very long interview with that Flemish gentleman from that walking program at the NPO. She had a lot of fun with that, but in the end we mainly read Angela for that periodic punch at the Gordons and Wendys.
What doesn’t help is that De Telegraaf suddenly has its own Angela de Jong for some time now and that she takes a large part of her TV appearances. This is of course about Tina Nijkamp, who has just that little bit more likeable is then Angela. We have recently seen her on almost every talk show. Until Today Inside, while Angela has been booted away from there.
Is she fed up?
Is Angela perhaps a bit fed up with the television world? She has been saying for a while now that she would like to enter politics and walk around the Binnenhof. A bit like the Ferry Mingelen of the AD, so to speak. And six months ago, Victor Vlam listed a number of signals that indicate that Angela’s end as a TV opinion diva is near.
Just before New Year’s Eve, Angela wrote one column in which she criticized herself. “’We’ in the media are busy all day long with news and with what is being said in the House of Representatives, in talk shows and on social media. (…) If I have one wish for 2025, it is that ‘we’ in the media pay more attention to real life instead of each other.”
Cynical
Angela now clarifies at Good morning Netherlands that it does indeed bother her. “It was also a call to myself. In this world, and also in the newspaper world in which I work, we often tend to focus on ourselves and look at our own problems. It is always good to take a look at what is going well in the world.”
Has she become cynical? “Certainly. I catch myself doing that regularly. Often at a time when I have worked very hard for another ten weeks. Then I know that it is good not to watch television for a week.”
Negativity
Presenter Sam Hagens wonders whether there is professional deformation. “It could also have something to do with… I had it in politics myself. At a certain point: if you walk around somewhere for a little too long, you will only see the negative all the time. Maybe you also have that with television?”
Angela: “I wouldn’t rule out… I’ve been doing this full-time writing about television for almost eight years now…”
Sam: “Something different this year?”
Angela: “It just might be possible.”
Into politics
Sam then asks Angela about her precise ambitions. “You want to go into politics, right?”
Angela: “That has become such a self-fulfilling prophecy!”
What else does she want to do? “I’ll have to talk to the newspaper about that again. I made an interview last Christmas in a very long time. I started running with Arnoud Houben, because he won the Televizier-Ring and I always thought he was the nicest Belgian on Dutch television.”
Columns
Angela enjoys writing such an article. “I was actually nervous about that, I’ve done that for years and I thought: damn, can I still do it? Can I still ask him questions and not forget anything? And write a piece afterwards? I really enjoyed doing that again. There is more, isn’t it, than writing columns.”
Is she going to stop as a TV opinion diva this year? “No, no, no, no, no. I don’t think so. No, guys.”
Something new
But it is coming, Sam concludes. “It’s time for something new, perhaps?”
Angela: “I catch myself doing it every now and then… And I don’t want to become cynical. I may be a bit of a natural person from time to time and I think that if you spend a lot of time in the media world you also become cynical. Enough has happened in recent years to make me quite cynical, but television remains my great love.”
“As soon as there is news, I will report.”