The talk of “structural change in the public sphere” has accompanied us for decades, but has not caused much concern. Now, in the structural break, things should be different.
Do texts like this have a future? Don’t worry: the question is more fundamental than it might sound. For her, it is neither about the state of mind of columnists nor about the column as a journalistic format that has developed a long time ago in the English-speaking world, but in the German-speaking world only in the last few decades. The question is aimed at the media landscape in which texts like this are created and read – or not. It draws attention to the structural problems of a public that has been changing rapidly and radically in the last few years and to what these changes will mean: for our coexistence, for our democracy.