In which I start with an informal list of the journalism I enjoy, before I realize that this shared obsession is what I love so much about my father.
I've just watched the Netflix documentary on The New Yorker's 100th anniversary. And though the style of the film arguably doesn't fit with The New Yorker itself all that well, the characters that make up the various staff and contributing writers at the magazine are fascinating. It renewed my slumbering dream of working as an investigative journalist myself.
There have been periods in my life where I read The New Yorker more rigorously. While living on the Otaniemi campus in Finland, for example, where the delivery of the print issues has actually been the most robust compared to all other addresses where I've had it delivered since then. The New Yorker has unmistakably played a role in my developing sense for journalistic quality. Though as a European reader, much of it is less interesting than it would be to someone growing up in New Jersey and watching across the river with awe.
There are other publications of high quality I've taken to reading more over the past few years. Of course there are the various daily newspapers that allow their journalists to write some good investigative or background pieces from time to time. Here in The Netherlands, I'd think of De Volkskrant, NRC, Trouw, Het Parool. Across the border; The Guardian, Le Monde, The New York Times. (By no means an attempt at being comprehensive, just a personal reading history.)
But my preference actually lies with publications that appear less frequently.
My father had been subscribed to De Groene Amsterdammer for sixty years and I'm determined to continue that tradition. De Groene will actually be celebrating its 150th anniversary in 2027; outdoing The New Yorker with a wink. My father was also impressed to see me reading Le Monde diplomatique one day, until he realized it was the English edition. That paper still served me well for a few years though. It publishes incredible journalism that cuts deep through the complexities of the modern, interconnected world to attempt an analysis of its workings.
I also remember an afternoon where my father and I attempted to solve the issue numbering mystery of the New Left Review. I'd been reading recent issues numbered in the vicinity of old issues that he still had lying around and had dug up for me to take a look at. Then we realized that NLR had just reset the counter at some point; not all too dissimilar to countries trying to combat hyperinflation. The joys of a new millennium.
And more recently I've been enjoying the long reads in "genre" magazines like The New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books. While in Vietnam last August, I browsed through the archives of The New York Review all the way back to the sixties and seventies to read through the essays about Vietnam. Some beautiful writing by Mary McCarthy. It's in that same era that my father first awoke his own political consciousness. Being swept up in the youth movements protesting American imperialism. He started producing and illegally putting up wall newspapers in Leiden and Tilburg. Reading the journalism from those years myself made me feel especially close to my father. When I showed him some of the stories and sent him pictures from the war remnants museum in Ho Chi Minh City, my father replied with a photo of a New Left Review magazine from 1968 (March-April) he had dug up from his own archives.
My father's obsession with newspapers and journalism is what helped my own passion for this medium bloom. It had started even earlier, actually, when alongside the Donald Duck we also had a subscription to Kidsweek. I was probably around eight or nine.
Since the death of my father last month, these memories have become even more meaningful. Our shared love for journalism, the important anti-establishment stories, and the pieces envisioning a fairer world relieved from the horrors of capitalism. These will form one of the core pillars for when I remember my father in the future and whenever I pass on his memory to others. This was a treasured part of his life. And now it continues to be one in mine.
Me reading a newspaper somewhere in Amsterdam, 2025.