A former senior civil servant for the province of Limburg (and a VVD councillor for Maastricht) was arrested for threats of terrorism, various local media outlets reported last Wednesday. He is alleged to have messaged about deliberately driving his car into people on a shopping street to kill them. A number of Observant-editors had already seen the news. Shortly afterwards, a former colleague messaged to say it concerned a former student and former member of the University Council. We searched for his name in our archives and found something from 2019. But he had long since left the university. And so, we all quite quickly agreed that we wouldn’t publish the article on our website. Moreover, we read that he was suffering from mental health problems and was on long-term sick leave from his current employer. This young man needed the right care and not more media attention, we concluded.
Deliberating what you do or don’t choose to write an article about can be a challenge, and is often based on instinct. I spoke about it with my colleague Deborah Blekkenhorst, who worked as an NOS sports editor for years. She remembers discussions about whether the NOS should publish articles about top athletes’ pregnancies. One side thought that they should, because that’s what the people want to read, that’s what they talk about by the water cooler. The other side thought they shouldn’t, because that’s not what the NOS is for. In the end, a decision was made, and if it’s a slow news week, then the answer is more likely to be ‘yes’.
Our small team also considers whether it’s absolutely necessary. If you want to spend time on article X, then you have to realise that you can’t do articles Y and Z. We produce quite a lot of articles in one week, our site is refreshed frequently, meaning stories often disappear off the front page and don’t always get the attention we think they deserve, which is a shame. Decisions get made every day. The Studio Europa evening that featured a Ukrainian historian talking about the historical and cultural importance of Ukraine in Europe gets axed. As does the proposed interview with an economist from Maastricht who, together with 69 colleagues throughout Europe, is advocating for a complete implementation of the digital euro. The European Parliament will be voting on this implementation in the spring. Maybe we’ll do something with it then.
On Friday, the first episode of the ‘50 years’ podcast with Sjeng Kramers, former governor of Limburg and vital for UM, is being recorded. Just like with the articles this week (mostly about 50 years UM), we didn’t hesitate for a moment (well, almost).
The editor-in-chief gives a look behind the scenes at the editorial office