Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Interview with Tageblatt


I had an interview with the Luxembourg daily Tageblatt on stuttering and my blogging activities. A Tageblatt journalist, who attended the same winter camp for teenagers 20 years (!) ago, contacted me, because he is reading my blog sporadically. He wants to do a story for the World Stuttering Day! Great. I had already two interviews in Luxembourg newspapers: one on science, and one on my book on venture capital funds. And a radio interview on stuttering. There is nothing really happening in stuttering in Luxembourg. We have a stuttering association, but it's defunct right now. And I do not really have the time and energy to resurrect it.

A bit of cultural education. The Luxembourg newspapers are mainly in German, but there are also French and Luxembourgish articles. Lately we also have pure French newspapers which are mostly for the French speaking commuters. It is a bit of mess, really. It often depends on the journalist's preference to a language as to which language is used. But radio and TV is mainly in Luxembourgish. Though there is an English Ara city radio and a Portuguese Radio Latina. What's interesting about Luxembourg is that we strictly speaking do not really have press freedom. The biggest newspaper Luxemburger Wort is owned by the Catholic Chuch, the Tageblatt by the Trade Union, the Journal by the Liberal Democrats! But unlike in the US, the newspapers in Luxembourg are relatively neutral in their reporting and ideological fights between them is infinitesimally smaller than compared to the US: see Fox News vs liberal media. Everyone, newspaper and parties, are more or less on the same line and only differ in nuances: it's called the Luxembourg consensus. I used to be a part-time science journalist for the Luxemburger Wort, and wrote a few articles on black holes and the laws of nature.

2 comments:

Norbert @ BSA said...

Can't find the article but I suppose it'll come out on the 22nd? Will you post a link?

Though good to see the view that Tony Blair's stock is falling and we might get good ol' Johannes Juncker! :-)

Tom Weidig said...

Oh my God. I just got an email from the journalist. The newspaper had the glorious (understandable) idea to ask a local speech and language center for their "expert" opinion.

Result: Many kids start stuttering because they imitate stutterers. And it has to be learned, because many stutterers do not stutter in a foreign language!