Writers of newspaper articles cannot survive without readers and those of de Volkskrant are the nicest. They are interested and curious, generous with advice and comments, there is no wrongdoing that they miss, and as the newspaper has said that during the lockdown in Kampala a volunteer distributes HIV medicines on a rickety bicycle with bad brakes, Volkskrantreaders give him a new one. (Otherwise they will call the newspaper to offer to fund Mayra’s study from Colombia. She wants to become a veterinarian but there is no money at home for it, our correspondent wrote. He did this without any ulterior motive, but that was out of the question. heart of the Volkskrantreader counted).
Contact with readers is frequent, sometimes high-frequency, when you write columns in this place, which we call ‘the two’ in the newspaper, which is a hopelessly old-fashioned name since our work is served digitally in chunks. That contact is most welcome, because the page 2 writer’s job is to guide the reader through the news and craziness of everyday life. You try to be something between guide and anchor, although it happens to you every now and then that you get lost or go under. With your big mouth and your firm sentences. Then it is important that the reader and you trust each other: she trusts that you will find a way out, you trust her understanding.
This is the last. It’s been nice. Eleven years and four months, 520 words three times a week, 46 weeks a year, minus the seven times I had to renounce due to illness or death, adds up to 3 billion pieces or thereabouts. Way too much anyway. For a more precise calculation I refer to Ionica Smeets. What remains on the sieve after that approximately 3 billion pieces is for the reader to determine; they are no longer mine, they belong to the reader.
The contact is above all sweet contact. Readers send one-line messages of encouragement or correction, to underline concerns, unfold a counter-view, correct language errors, test ideas, or just say hello. They draw attention to their battles with authorities, which are often maddening and which you try to do something about, but then the limitations of the column are avenged: many authorities continue to do what they did even after thorough publications.
Sometimes readers send 17-page attachments with plans for a better world. They are always good plans, although they are often too extensive for the newspaper – the column is a genre with many practical limitations. A few are persistent (‘I gather from your piece that you have not read or understood my message of March 7 last’, followed by: ‘This is already the fourth time that you refuse to acknowledge what I have written in my letter. dated March 7, April 10 and May 17, appendices again added. Too bad!’), culminating in: ‘Mrs. Sitalsing doesn’t understand anything about it. CC. Editor-in-chief, cc Ombudsman’).
Readers send in the most fascinating books, links to the most beautiful articles, the most beautiful art (special mention for the series of beautiful portraits of Dutch villains that I received from a loyal reader from Pieterburen). And when you write that you inherited boxes full of old telegrams because your father and mother are dead, the readers shower you with the sweetest messages.
I have failed miserably in writing back properly, for I am sloppy and inconsiderate and there was always a new deadline looming. Therefore, so many thanks. See you elsewhere in the newspaper.