Parole Text:Buch | Gegenwart machen. Eine Oral History des Popjournalismus

They were boisterous, personal and adventurous, and they went by the rule: gossip over commentary, rankings not analyses; and they considered fashion and other popular trends to be strong statements of intent – in the late 1970s and early 1980s a new, exciting form of writing journalism evolved. In magazines such as Mode & Verzweiflung, Spex, Wiener and Tempo, a younger generation of authors set out to challenge the boundaries between journalism and literature.

Media studies expert Erika Thomalla traces the development and highlights of literary pop journalism with the help of major protagonists who, for Thomalla‘s book, shared anecdotes and recalled anarchic experiences at the start of their career. Writers Maxim Biller, Christian Kracht, Thomas Meinecke and Moritz von Uslar, Johanna Adorján, Helge Timmerberg, Jan Weiler and Max Goldt are in on this project, promising a wild trip through the defining first 25 years when German pop journalism was as untamed and uncompromising as never before – and never after.