5 November 2009
Unless your name is Houellebecq, readers are generally not interested in what you say. They have hundreds of emails waiting, Facebook friends are begging for their attention, and they must check their twitter mentions every ten seconds. So it’s of the utmost importance to get their attention right when they start reading.
Hence the Houellebecq ref. It’s a grand writer, a modern thinker, and it’s very fashionable to love him (sorry ’bout that). So that might just be the reason you kept on reading. ,,If this guy knows Houellebecq and is going to talk about him, I might as well pay attention”. I referred to something greater. And it worked.
This attention-getting strategy came to my mind when walking in the New York Halloween Parade. My friend Edial Dekker and I breached security so we could see all the smashing costumes from up close. Yet all of a sudden, we were in the middle of the spotlights. People shouted at us, took pictures, interviewed us. A group of beautiful Chinese girls opted for a group hug. Edial and I had only applied some weird make-up to our faces, and that was about it. No weird costume, no weeks of work. Yet we felt like rockstars. Continue reading →
22 October 2009
In about fifteen minutes I’m hopping on a plane to New York. Without a laptop. Yeah! Time for some REAL adventures. Edial Dekker and I didn’t book a hotel or anything, we’ll just see what happens. I’m blogging the whole experience in this post. Without a laptop, yet with an iPhone. Continue reading →
30 June 2009
It was 2002, I was in the fourth year of high school. Every Friday night I went to the movie store of my hometown. Mobster movies were my thing. The Godfather trilogy was only 5 euros per episode. I bought all the VHS tapes. Same goes for The Last Don, Blow and Donnie Brasco. I enjoyed all those movies and was proud of my collection.
Yet at the same time a little voice inside my head kept telling me all those tapes were a waste of money and space. Within a few years, DVD would be the standard and tapes would be hopelessly old-fashioned. In fact, I was already late with adopting the whole DVD revolution. That’s why the tapes were so cheap.
It was only a few months later that I got my first DVD player. The stack of tapes had become pretty useless.
I’m writing this down because I’ve got a similar feeling now when it comes to books. Continue reading →
10 June 2009
My modest career achievements are a direct result of blogging. Ever since I started Spotlight Effect in October 2006, blogging gave me one great opportunity after another. From traveling the world with geeky rockstars to starting a news blog for my favorite newspaper. So why are my friends, family and I so excited about my first article in print which was published today? I’m a blogger for crying out loud, embracing the future of publishing. Why bother with paper? Doesn’t that represent a dying breed?
Writer Janine Warner wrote a couple of books about the Internet and journalism. She recognizes the very same phenomenon that I’ve just described. At the International Symposium on Online Journalism, Warner said: ,,journalism students still dream about their name in the byline of a newspaper article. That’s the moment you’ve made it as a journalist. Even for me, it’s sometime hard to take Internet journalism seriously.” Continue reading →
8 May 2009
Drawing by the great Thomas Hawke
Hunter S Thompson is a hero of many. The writer of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and the most honest book about the Hell’s Angels appeals to thousands of young journalists. He invented Gonzo Journalism. A journalism genre that finds its roots in New Journalism, where the old distinctions between journalism and creative writing were blurred. Tom Wolfe and Truman Capote are two of the most famous New Journalism-writers.
Gonzo Journalism took things a little further. It’s more colorful, wilder and more extreme. Continue reading →
