‘Good Satire Needs Journalism’
Nicolas Friedrich works as an online editor for the ZDF heute-show. For him, working on the satirical format also has a social component: Getting people interested in politics who are no longer reached by traditional television formats.
Werksgelände: What do you actually do as head of the online editorial department of the ZDF heute-show?
Nicolas Friedrich: I am responsible for the online presence of the heute-show on the net – that means for our five social media channels Instagram, YouTube, Tiktok, Facebook and Twitter/X. My editorial team and I are working on bringing the TV show online in order to reach a younger target group than on television: The program is available on YouTube and we post shorter highlight clips on Tiktok or as reels on Instagram. Our aim is to appeal to those who do not come into contact with the heute-show via the television. On the other hand, we create up-to-the-minute content that has nothing to do with the TV program and that we explicitly put social media first: memes, reels, tweets and so on.
What experience or talents should you have for the job?
We share the editorial management as a dual leadership team. My co-head takes care of the humour; I take care of journalism and social media. On the one hand, this requires political expertise: what is going on in the world at the moment, who is pursuing which interests, what are we criticizing? Satire is an opinion format. That’s why a clear journalistic judgement is important: where can we exaggerate something for the gag, when is the content distorted and therefore misleading? On the other hand, we need a broad general knowledge, as pop culture and memes are often the playing field for humour.
In social media, if you stand still, you go under.
- Nicolas Friedrich
What appeals to you about your job?
The job is very varied. We cover breaking news, so something new happens every day. What’s more, we don’t do the same thing today as we did three years ago – there are new platforms and new formats. Journalism and social media are always on the move. I also think it’s socially important to have a format like the heute-show. When I hear from a young person how their political interest was awakened by watching the heute-show with their parents on Friday evenings, or because they found our memes so funny, then that is the greatest praise for our work.
What are the biggest challenges in your job?
In social media, if you stand still, you go under. When we launched the online team over eight years ago, Facebook was ‘the place to be’. Today, that platform is outdated, so our main focus is on Instagram, in a few years it might be Tiktok and in ten years it might be something that nobody can foresee today. We have to constantly scrutinize whether we are still doing the right thing and adapt our strategy and content accordingly.
What has been your biggest flop on the job so far, and what have you learned from it?
Flop is a big word, but at least it was a steep learning curve. I was promoted from social media editor to my current position quite suddenly in autumn 2017. I first had to grow into the management role: handing things over and empowering my employees instead of wanting to do everything myself. I certainly didn’t do everything right in the early days and I still don’t do that today. The important thing is to learn from small mistakes and get a little better every day.
Nicolas‘ tips for the next generation
*First of all: Believe in yourselves! We were told by an external lecturer in the first semester that we were heading for unemployment if we studied journalism. What rubbish! Good journalists are needed – especially in these times of fake news and social media. Our role is becoming even more important: we sort out the stream of confusion, check the facts and provide categorization.
*Choose your speciality: one person is good at presenting in front of the camera, the next is good at getting to grips with figures and presenting them in a graphically clear way and others can write great, lively reports. What are you good at – and what do you like doing? Look for the intersection and sooner or later you will find the right job for you.
*Of course, almost everyone has done an unpaid internship that turned into a low-paid part-time job – but always ask yourself: Does this experience really bring me closer to my professional goals? If so, bite the bullet for a while. But don’t let yourself be permanently exploited. Good journalism is too important to be poorly paid.
Nicolas Friedrich
… works for the production company Prime Productions and has been head of the online editorial department of ZDF heute-show since 2017. He studied journalism at TU Dortmund University and completed his traineeship at the Thüringer Allgemeine.
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