A large part of a newspaper editor’s job consists of weighing news. The phone vibrates several times a day, with another brand new tip. For example, an employee texted last Sunday afternoon: „I hear that there is another one The Voicecoach got into trouble. Shall I write something?” Singer Glennis Grace, a jury member for the offending talent show, had gone to a supermarket in a high-pitched tone.
ÁIf this private matter is in no way related to her position at The Voice of Holland, if there was news, I texted back, then at most something for the local newspaper. “We can leave this alone.” Two hours later the phone buzzed again. Another colleague. If I had seen what Yvonne Coldeweijer had now shared. Coldeweijer is with her YouTube channel Life of Yvonne the uncrowned queen of the online tabloid press: the so-called juice channel. In a story on Instagram that afternoon she revealed exactly the news I had kept from the newspaper just before.
Also read: Marco Borsato is under fire from ‘juice channels’. Who’s behind that?
And that turned out to be just a warm-up for even bigger news that she brought to the world later that day. She published images from a security camera that showed rapper Lil Kleine forcibly pulling his girlfriend from a car. The news could be seen and read everywhere in a few hours.
I was disappointed, now that we were – not for the first time, by the way scooped by this vlogger with her ‘spy army’ to tipsters who are on the lookout for her to spot the stars? Well no, it’s not on NRC to lead the way with contextless facts diverse from the world of the stars. But in the end Coldeweijer was not able to set the tone for the first time for a week. In the end, NRC could not ignore its scoop either.
‘Quality media’ may turn their nose up at showbiz, ‘we’ have our own juice† Look at the amount of newsprint that has gone up on the Werdegang by Joris Luyendijk and his book about the Zeven Vinkjes. He may not have been caught in partner violence, like rapper Lil Kleine, but according to a long procession of colleagues, he was not properly aware of his privileges. Not a small offense either, you might think if you registered the amount of fuss about it. The eagerness with which we see great ones fall hardly differs from that of Coldeweijer or the almost sinister one gossip by Jan Roos and Dennis Schouten. “You did look at Buitenhof, didn’t you?” my phone vibrated on Sunday afternoon, almost audibly excited.
Every environment has its own soap opera. More and more often I think: what would the newspaper look like without Twitter as a village pub where journalists are all day stirring each other up about all kinds of things? Also striking is the number of columns in which journalists measure each other. A journalistic working week increasingly starts with the question of what colleague Sander (Schimmelpenninck, ed.) wrote about colleague Daniela (Hooghiemstra, ed.). Not very uplifting, indeed. Not so interesting for readers, besides.
So the world could do with one less journalist with his own column. That is why I am happy to make this place available to two new voices. Around their debut, in March, we like to tell you who they are.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC on the morning of February 21, 2022