Personal site of journalist, baker, and storyteller Tony Ganzer.
In this episode of The Baking Journalist a German theme: breakfast rolls or Brötchen, and three differences between journalism in Germany and the U.S.
I hope you like it, and please subscribe on YouTube, and to my e-mail list.
Continue reading “Baking Vlog: German Brötchen and Journalism”
Editor’s note: Here are some past thoughts about living a Fourth away from home, from 4July2009. A new post will be coming soon.
Regular readers of AnthonyGanzer.com may be surprised by this, given my frequent jaunts to Europe over the last few years, but this is my first “Fourth of July” not on American soil. The “Fourth” has taken its hits as a holiday just as others have. Christmas was adorned with Santa and commercialism, Easter with rabbits and biologically inaccurate eggs, and the “Fourth” has its customary PBS concert specials and sales on charcoal briquettes–the things on which freedom was built, of course. And who can forget the elaborate fireworks displays, and toddlers running around with “harmless” sparklers in the front yard.
But even those subtle remembrances to our country’s founding are absent here in Germany, though a faint sense of patriotism still wafts in the air.
There was a time when journalists played the part of an “ambulance chaser;” ink-stained scoop-hunters would rush to see which building burned; what criminal was nabbed; what neighborhood was afflicted. With technology, newsrooms could selectively send reporters out depending on what seemed most newsworthy on the scanner. I have never been on such a beat where I had to be so on the spot for news. Much of public radio reporting’s strength is in its analysis, and ability to pull back from the news frenzy. Rushing to report is often how mistakes are made, yet time is often of the essence.
Even if I am not often covering the breaking news, I still follow it, even when I am on vacation. On a recent trip to Germany my troupe decided for a quick trip to Dresden, a lovely city in Germany’s East. We happened to arrive in early June just as storms were ripping through Central Europe. I turned on MDR, central German public television, in our hotel room before a planned walk to the River Elbe near the Altstadt (old town.) The Elbe was flooding then, but not as bad as other rivers. Dresden was affected, as were Leipzig and Passau, Prague, and many small villages between. Dresden was affected but not terribly, according to the news. We had just arrived, and a steady stream of emergency vehicles rushed outside our hotel window; a convoy of five German Red Cross vans sped back and forth.
There was only one thing for a vacationing reporter with family to do in such a situation: go for a walk and see what’s happening.
