With the collapsing democracy gambling, it also becomes bleak for free pop journalism. Linus Volkmann hastily looks back.
This column appears shortly before the Bundestag election 2025. The mood is incredibly charged everywhere. The topic also stolen my sleep that this decade is abolishing democracy and humanism in an ever obscene time. In America you can already see how it works. As a journalist, of course, I also see horror how the media are locked out because they do not take over grotesque nationalist Neusprech (Golf of America vs. Golf of Mexico). And that should only be a small foretaste of this new “freedom of speech”, the lack of which was always fashionable in advance.
Oh, I’ll miss it to spread colorful pop articles in larger media. And I dread you to have to print leaflets in driven basements instead in a few years. By hand or with a discarded copier from the 90s. Just to be executed with confused hair at some point by stone -rich autocrats. But you can’t choose it, friends!
Therefore, today I look back on my designed “career” as a pop journalist – My Own private fire wall against boredom (and pension scheme).
By the way, I fully trust your expertise with regard to the choice. You already know what you do – and thank you for that!
Funny paperback (AZ)
My very first internship washes me into a Frankfurt city magazine with the name AZ (other newspaper) at the beginning of my studies. I have already released self -glued booklets, so -called fanzines, and burn it to get involved in “real” journalism. The editorial team looks like a leaf maker fever dream: every desk stacked full of countless papers, notes, booklets, coffee cups and smelly ashtrays. Sorry, dear lung wings among you, but before the turn of the millennium it was smoked in offices – and of course special in editorial offices.
One of my first missions as a frenzied reporter moves me to the then Hessian triathlete Lothar leather. I visit him at home and write something that I think is a smart report. With today’s review, however, it reads more like a funny paperback – without the comics. But the complaint did not get me at the time, but the photographer. He should have photographed me next to the pithy muscle dude. Because – so the idea of the editorial team (you can also see it in the attached picture) – the contrast between “Hänfling” (I) and “Conan” (leather) was intended as a hanger for the story. I become skeptical for the first time, should I really be trained here at the pen or am I more booked as a joke figure? Continuation follows, but again a few years back …
Something with media
During school I do the FN – the Frankfurter Nachrichten. What sounds like shortly before FAZ is just a free newspaper that consists exclusively of advertising. In addition, in contrast to today’s almost manic overfilling attitude, I am simply lazy at the time. I quickly got out that there is a row house on my route that wears a sticker on the mailbox with “FN? Yes, please!” And that there is probably still an old, childless demon couple who immediately complain about a missing newspaper at the publisher. Anyone who has included: So I just have to play two newspapers every Thursday. Fascinating that I will soon be fired because I obviously did not succeed myself. Incidentally, the beneficiary of my Demination from the deliverer job is my mother. I had now obtained the newspaper packages delivered weekly on a large scale in our basement and the trunk of your car. With the aim of bringing the annoying stuff to the paper container promptly. A goal that – like the two copies to be examined – I also quickly lost sight of.
Readers’ statutory cases (AZ revisited)
For me, everyday life in this editorial team actually provides for the following: I have to write the letters to the editor that are prominently printed in the front of the issue.
Okay, wait a minute … So they’re not real at all? Instead of being outraged, I have diffuse the feeling that I now belong to the in-crowd of the knowledgeable. Cool! So I write the reader post for a while. Usually three fit on the half side, which is available for this. Because I am a big Tocotronic fan at the time, I call the writers of the fake briefs Jan, Dirk and Arne in one issue and get through with it.
PS: My internship content of 400 marks is still guilty of the publisher.
Top of the flops
Shortly after the turn of the millennium, I write the moderation texts for Ole Tillmann at “Top of the Pops” (RTL). Since I do not come from the spoken word (radio), but from the text (SPEX-ABO), I delighted jokes that are enthusiastic about cumbersome lines and jokes written around the corner. Ole, you have to say that, fight bravely against this government declaration Swag, which I charge him every week. Why I did this job for several years is still a mystery to me.
The lyrics locked away away
Jupiter Jones, the friendly emo rock band with Eifel background separated from her singer in the tens years. I am in good contact with the rest and I am reasonably sorry that you go so swimming with your new line -up – in terms of sales and encouragement. According to my idea, they need more direct texts. Something simple, somewhat hugging. The fuselage tape then hires me for a workshop. In her rehearsal room I can channel Jupiter Jones to get out what they stand for. I find out a lot, drive home – and now I just have to write a hit. Nothing easier than that, right?
I wrestle a text about friendship and throw each other into a stream. On closer inspection, I prefer to keep the pathetic wording of the word under lock and key. On a wild night in the drinker hot spot “Mother” in Hamburg, I describe the crazy sociologist and Shitlers musician Martin my dilemma. He then rewrites the lyrics on 7 beer lids. At home I put this Frankenstein together from a soulful buddy and areinem madness – and decide to never report to the band again.
Flash
That has to be a mistake, I think. An agency I am not familiar with asks if I could walk over the red carpet at an opening ceremony at an opening ceremony at an opening ceremony. In addition to arrival and hotel, I would get seven or eight hundred euros. I quickly agree before the agency speaks that I have little more than a few thousand Instagram followers at that time (at the end of the time): inside. Even a few months later on site, I think the whole thing is a HOAX and prepare myself that Guido Cantz or the like jumps out of a bush and laughed at the time that I thought I actually got real money as a senior citizens’ fluencer.
But such a “Ha-ha!” In the Nelson Muntz style there is no. I am much more likely to be poured over the red carpet with other dubious “celebrities” (names I leave outside). There you have to stay briefly at one point so that photos can be taken. Awkward! I smile in the cameras, with the disinterested photographers compress with compulsory debt and already stretch out whether an actually known face does not finally make a known face from the amount of popularity disadvantaged. Jürgen Vogel, Rita Süßmuth or at least who of GZSZ.
PS: Later I meet the currently much discussed Thilo Mischke in front of the hall, who stands around with a common friend (presumably it is Matze Hielscher). With Thilo I had a conflict many years ago because of this terrible book title “In 80 women around the world”. Whenever I happened to see him in a trailer at Pro7 since then, I got a bad mood. Now we are changing a few words. He shows himself to be confident when I start with the book title again. He wouldn’t stand behind it today either. Oh yes? Well then. I didn’t read it anyway. A few more sentences, then our paths separate. At that moment, I don’t suspect that this book would fall so much on his feet again. Instead, I sit in a marked place and films Ray Cokes and Charlotte Roche in moderating the opening gala. I have contractually agreed a few insta stories that I also set up motivated. My glamorous flash of lightning lighter life nevertheless ends with this one gig.
Eggs made of steel
After the publication of a text in which I am exposing to the wine tavern of the new German pop hit at Vice.de, someone from the editorial team of the picture and sound factory reports to me. At the time, that shop is concerned about Böhmermann’s “Neo Magazin”. The question is whether I cannot pack these thoughts in a piece for your show. Sure, why not. From now on I regularly visit editorial meetings and experience Böhmermann and his team in meetings (my memory is always primarily about whether and when you could order something “from Greek” again).
At that time there does not seem to be a tried and tested practice for a contribution by third parties beyond the editorial team. So I always present the state of my work – the interested editorial team listens, wishes this and that aspect and so it works for months. It is right for me, because since nobody had given me a fee for the job, I simply charge a daily rate of 450 euros for every visit. At some point, however, the date of the Echo ceremony urges and so everything suddenly has to go very quickly and the contribution that appears in the song “People, Life, Dancing, Welt” appears.
He brings me a lot of fame and fee. It can go on like this, I think. But the disillusionment already the next order: The accounting has obviously noticed how disadvantageous the principle of daily rates I brought in and from then on a predetermined flat rate is paid for such contributions.
Too bad! But it was financially really cool for a precedent in public law. For me at least … Hope the AfD does not ask me to pay afterwards if it smashes the German “mainstream media” with applause from Trump and Putin at the end of the decade or so. I have already spent everything!
Spoon
At the beginning of the nineties. I had put the reading in the sand. Again! What was it this time? No idea. I would like to bury me with shame, but still have to endure at the scene. Highest penalty. I am in a scene pub in Mainz and soon withdraw at least to the “pennial places”. The shop operator has provided one floor above the pulsating pub one of his rooms. Sleep is supposed to cure my shame or at least postpone. I close my eyes.
At some point I wake up because that organizer spooned me surprisingly. He apparently went to the toilet again drunk and forgot to go back to bed when he went back to bed that he stays in another room today and I was lying in his bed. Out of courtesy, I don’t want to draw his attention to his mistake-especially since I am also a fan of his then well-known fun punk band. Fortunately, his girlfriend will soon be looking for him, who obviously sleeps with him in the big apartment. Both scream at each other for a few minutes, she pulls him out of bed on the foot. Then they disappeared. After that, I can’t fall asleep for a long time.
I don’t want to write which band it was about because of journalistic distance.
Anyway here at the end a brisk fun punk song from the Mainz Fun-Punk band the Frohlix.
Spoon-miley, your linus
What has happened so far? Here all pop column texts at a glance.
