She stands there between palm trees, her face pinched and groomed, her brown hair almost reaching her navel. Cathy Hummels grins broadly into the camera in the photo. But she doesn’t have a drink or sunscreen in her hand, as it might fit into the Thai latitudes. Rather, it presents a rather chunky hairbrush. “How good that there is the Wet & Dry detangling brush,” writes the influencer, who was born in Dachau, on her Instagram channel.
“What is that?” Asks Sebastian Beck. The head of the SZ Bayern team also wears a shirt suitable for Thailand. However, it is 9,000 kilometers further northwest in a classroom at the vocational high school in Ingolstadt. It’s drizzling outside, palm trees are only on the screen. Beck spreads his arms questioningly. There is brief silence on the benches on which a dozen students sit. Then someone speaks up. “Advertising”, says Daniel finally, Beck nods.
Normally at this time of day he would still be on his way to the SZ editorial office in Munich, and the young journalists of the Ingolstadt school newspaper “Insider” would interpret novels in their respective classes or exercise through mathematical curve discussions. Instead, this morning they sit over the SZ issue of the day and discuss. What is journalism, what is PR? Is it a private decision if the deputy prime minister refuses to be vaccinated? And is it any of the public’s business if it were three Syrian refugees who groped girls in a swimming pool?
In the club of the best
The students owe the ethics workshop with the SZ editor and the video workshop in the adjoining room to their predecessors at the school newspaper. Last year, with their reflections on lockdown and homeschooling, they won first place in the “Blattmacher” student newspaper competition organized by the SZ, the Nemetschek Foundation and the Bavarian Ministry of Culture. As members of the “Club of the Best”, your successors can now reap what has been sown this morning: They all take part in one of two parallel workshops.
While the self-proclaimed “SZ dinosaur” Beck tackles one of the journalistic dilemmas, Maria Rilz in the next room is concerned with avoiding them. Tripod, camera, LED light: the Munich filmmaker brought all of her equipment with her. But what is a clip without a concept? Tristan, one of the students, knows that too. He has already dealt with various shooting techniques in the past and knows that films should be kept short. Rilz snaps his hand, “zack, zack, zack”. Tristan will still feel how difficult it is to capture this on film.
Meanwhile, the group in the room next door has arrived at a highly controversial topic in media circles. Should one state the nationality of foreign offenders? Matthias, brown hair, denim jacket, says: better not. “You only add fuel to the fire with that,” he says. Jasmine, on the other hand, rocks her head. Difficult. On the one hand you hide part of the overall picture, on the other hand you fuel the emotions. What if everyone else wrote it too? She learns: The SZ follows the press code, only names the nationality after weighing it up, other media do it differently – and as a result regularly deal with complaints.
Isa would like to avoid this as much as possible. In the hallway, the student kneels with the camera so that the picture doesn’t blur, and marches off. She knows her way around cameras, she takes analogue photographs herself. With a gimbal – this is a kind of camera stabilizer that constantly readjusts itself – she has not yet been on the road, just like the rest of her entourage. “Flies”, her teacher calls out in the hallway. But there is turbulence. The gimbal seems to develop a life of its own. “It wobbles so crazy,” shouts Isa, everyone in her team giggles.
No wobbling
Journalism is also constantly shaking, no, shaking. “Shut up the lie press!” Is now emblazoned in graffito form on the screen in the classroom – a popular slogan to stir up suspicion about the credibility of the media. Beck emphasizes that there is no such thing as one truth. Unfortunately, however, society is dividing more and more into subgroups that no longer talk to each other. “That is bad,” he says. A student reports about an acquaintance who is increasingly spreading conspiracy theories – even though she is a doctor.
Meanwhile, the film group has arrived downstairs in a room where Tristan is practicing flirting with the camera. He grabs a brightly painted chair, turns to the lens and gesticulates to a veritable epic. “The colors should just flow, bed down on the floor,” he muses. A classmate praises how well he can describe chairs. Meanwhile, Isa is behind the camera. Maria Rilz changed her autofocus long ago, and the gimbal no longer twitches like crazy.
Meanwhile, the daily work of journalists like Sebastian Beck often remains challenging. Day after day, they have to distill out what is actually happening from the ever-increasing jumble of opinions, assertions and supposed truths. Not an easy task. The world is complicated and ambiguous, he says. “Mistrusts all stories and opinions that are too simple,” he appeals to the students.