Journalists, unless they are in front of a camera, are not necessarily recognizable.

With his figure Horst Schlämmer - men's handbag, schnauzer, crooked teeth - Hape Kerkeling has erected a monument to a certain type of local reporter, but in the wild you rarely come across such Schlämmer men;

most of us look different, at least I hope so.

Jörg Thomann

Editor in the "Life" section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

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Myself, however, would be quite easy to spot at least once a week, in a train station kiosk or in front of the magazine shelf of a supermarket. I am then where the cheap gossip papers have been stuffed in, which are called Nice Free Time, Good Free Time, New Free Time, maybe Free Free Time too, I don't really know right now. So if you discover a middle-aged man there in the midst of all the older women who busily leafing through the pages and licking their fingers in between, the only man there: that’s very likely me. But then please don't speak to me, because I'm a little embarrassed. A hopelessly gender-stereotyped small part of my brain persuades me that the covers of the magazines in my hand should show Richard Branson,Thomas Müller or at least Joko Winterscheidt. Instead, they show Helene Fischer, Harry and Meghan, Helene Fischer, Hansi Hinterseer or Florian Silbereisen, the latter mostly together with Helene Fischer. But what should I do: It's my job. At least part of it.

Week after week from front to back

Even some colleagues do not seem to understand that this is work when they come into my office while I am absorbed in the echo of the woman.

Because although I have sometimes placed my legs on the desk, this reading is no fun, not even that of leisure fun: week after week reading through eight books from front to back that I've subscribed to, sometimes plus others that I buy at the kiosk - this requires a lot of valuable life and working time.

A kind of magazine show evaluating Bunte and Goldenes Blatt, you have to come up with an idea like this first.

I'm not at all myself, but Peter Lückemeier, who wrote the “Herzblatt stories” for 14 years.

When I took over the column in the Sunday newspaper from him, I was sure: I won't hold out as long as he did.

But now I've already got twelve years.

You can't even imagine what that did to me.

Child or new love

Some believe that reading it has made me an expert on “society”. I would doubt that; at best, I am an expert on what the heart leaves imagine this society to be, and that is by no means the same. In a modern society, at least that is how it should be, all roads are open to women. In the society that Das neue Blatt or Das goldene Blatt draws, the life of a woman, whether her name is Crown Princess Victoria or Helene Fischer, always moves in one of two ways: Either she is freshly in love or she is pregnant.

In the gossip books of a younger generation called Intouch or Closer, the protagonists and narrative have changed a little.

Here the title characters are called Heidi Klum or Daniela Katzenberger, and the drama is that they are either too fat or too thin in the eyes of the editors.

Well, viewed over many months, there are a few more variations, which is why, if you want to look back on the social year 2021, the gossip books can definitely be consulted.