Simon Sellars: Sleepy Brain Archives

Recently I was in Amsterdam on a writing assignment. I hadn’t been there for years and I had the usual backpacker’s memory of the place: hash, beer, Red Light District, canals…all the old cliches. This time around, however, I gained a deeper understanding of this quite incredible pocket of Europe. I’m no expert, but Amsterdam seems to be undergoing quite a substantial change as the Netherlands — indeed, as much of Europe — undergoes a noticeable swing towards the political right.

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– Simon Sellars
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Richard, as a South African, how long have you been in Amsterdam? What took you there?

While studying philosophy at university in Johannesburg I got involved in politics and became a member of the ANC. They asked me to teach at their school in Tanzania and I ended up working for a couple of years in several Frontline states before being sent to Holland. This was back in the late 1980s. It was an exciting time. I got involved in progressive underground politics in Amsterdam. I’d been living here for six years when Nelson Mandela was released. It was a high point in my life to be introduced to Madiba when he visited Holland shortly after his release. But I was suddenly faced with a tough personal dilemma: to leave my adopted home town or return to my original home town.

In 1994 I decided to return to Johannesburg. Exile, especially when it is sudden, leaves many relationships up in the air — family, friends, memories, projects. In South Africa I worked as a freelance writer and journalist, writing for a variety of national newspapers and magazines. It was great to reconnect with the city which I’d had to leave in a hurry eight years before. But I kept having dreams about Amsterdam — friends, concerts, cafés, Vondelpark in summer, galleries, spaces where I had been to parties, places where I had met interesting people, being able to ride a bike everywhere… I returned to Amsterdam in 1999.

What are some of the things you appreciate about living in Amsterdam?

Part of Amsterdam’s appeal is its unique combination of cosmopolitan atmosphere and smaller-scale city life. ‘Life on a human scale,’ as they like to say here. Another is the fact that the rest of Europe is so accessible. You can easily visit grander cities like Paris, Prague or London, and come back to the smaller scale of things here with a sense of relief.

How did you become involved with Amsterdam Weekly?

A few years ago I was working as a freelancer at Het Financieele Dagblad/International Herald Tribune. A fellow freelancer there, Todd Savage, a journalist from Chicago, was working on a business plan for a new free city weekly. He invited me to contribute ideas toward an editorial policy and infrastructure and to start developing a network of writers.

Our editorial aim is to offer readers a combination of quality features about the cultural scene with a ‘comprehensively selective’ arts calendar in an attractive free weekly format. Our business aim is to make the paper a culturally sought-after medium where mostly small and middle-sized city-based businesses can advertise to a culturally sophisticated public at competitive rates.

What’s your circulation? Who do you see your readership as?

Our circulation is presently hovering at around 21,000. We have more than 400 outlets around the city. We see our readers as cosmopolitan residents of Amsterdam. The city has become increasingly international during the last 15 to 20 years. There are sizable British and American communities, as well as quite a few people from other English-speaking countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa). In fact a slight majority of Amsterdam residents are now non-Dutch in origin, so we’re also keen to encourage interest from other communities which are comfortable with English. Many Dutch-speaking residents are also cosmopolitan in attitude and enjoy reading about their city in English, especially amusingly informative articles and ‘insider’ listings which they can’t easily find anywhere else.

I was surprised that there was no editorial, especially in the first few issues. Could you elaborate on that decision?

From the beginning we felt that the main editorial focus of the paper should be on report-based narrative writing, rather than opinion, so a regular editorial didn’t seem appropriate. Almost all of our writers are freelancers, and we want to give them an opportunity to develop a voice and profile in the paper before deciding on regular contributors.

Was there a model for Amsterdam Weekly, in terms of inspiration and shared philosophy?

The vision for the paper originated with Todd Savage, who came to Amsterdam a few years ago. With his background in the alternative weekly scene in the US, particularly the Chicago Reader, he saw a place for a similar paper here. He developed a business plan and started talking to a few colleagues whose writing seemed to him to reflect the kind of journalism he was after. I was one of them, and during our discussions we found that we had an affinity with regard to kind of narrative non-fiction which we felt we would like to see being written about the city. Todd invited me to contribute to the development of the editorial policy, structure and network of the paper.

Our investors set us business targets to meet, but our mission was always to develop a paper appropriate to Amsterdam, so we’re not a clone of the Reader or any other paper. Our philosophy? Good report-based writing with attitude, great ‘insider’ listings, and relevant advertising.

How is the paper different from previous free publications and English media in Amsterdam?

A number of attempts have been made to introduce an English-language paper in Amsterdam. A monthly called The Paper ran quite successfully during the 1980s, but eventually folded under pressures to grow combined with a lack of finance. Time Out tried an Amsterdam edition in the early 1990s, but it failed after about 18 months for a number of reasons — among them a lack of commitment to the city on the part of the editor (who wanted to return to London) and an editorial policy and design which made Amsterdam look like a day-trip from the London scene.

In the later 1990s, Het Financieele Dagblad/International Herald Tribune ran a quality four-page daily paper (an English-language IHT supplement with the country’s main financial newspaper), but although it was based in Amsterdam it wasn’t really about the city specifically, and it folded when the IHT was bought by the New York Times. A number of publications aimed at the ‘expat’ market have managed to keep running for a number of years too. Our paper’s main difference with most of these publications is that we’re a paper written for and by Amsterdammers, whether they happen to be English-speaking or Dutch. Amsterdam Weekly recognises the increasingly international character of the city, and it is the city’s first truly international newspaper.

What do you offer that’s different to the Amsterdam Times, also recently launched?

The Amsterdam Times offers a range of city news and news features. Amsterdam Weekly’s focus is on cultural life and city stories. The Amsterdam Times is also directed mostly at English-speaking expats, whereas our audience is cosmopolitan Amsterdammers. There are other differences, but modesty prevents me from mentioning them.

What has been the paper’s reception so far from the Dutch, from tourists, from expatriates alike?

We don’t specifically aim the paper at either tourists or expats (who we define as people who live here for a period because of their work, and/or people who live here but don’t develop much direct contact with the city’s language and culture). Most of the readers for whom we intend the paper seem to have reacted very positively, whether English-speaking or Dutch. They like the mix of stories and listings. One English reader told me that he liked the long features, which were ‘long enough to read over breakfast’. A Dutch reader recently told me that he had been waiting for 15 years a paper like ours, which he said was for ‘connoisseurs of the city’.

What has been the response from advertisers and people wishing to place classifieds? Are these spots being filled as you would have hoped?

We’re starting to get a good response. Advertisers like the idea of reaching our specific readers and the classifieds space is starting to fill up. But we recognise that an important part of our future success will be in staying around long enough to build a strong loyal following attractive to a wide variety of advertisers.

The paper seems roughly divided between features and arts listings. What are some immediate plans for the paper? What are the long-term plans?

We’ve had some good responses so far, as I said, but the paper’s concept needs some tightening up. We’re working on introducing some regular items. One of them is ‘The Pub Reporter’, an interview format with a hand-drawn portrait of the interviewee proposed by Norman MacDonald, a Canadian illustrator and long-time Amsterdam resident. We’re also working on some other ideas for short, regular items to which readers can easily contribute. I won’t describe these ideas more specifically at this stage. You’ll just have to read the paper. We also plan to add pages to the paper gradually over the next few years to offer a wider selection of writing and more comprehensive listings.

In the issues of Amsterdam Weekly I picked up, there seemed to be an alternative focus on life in Amsterdam. The article entitled ‘Back from Baghdad’, for example, seemed particularly critical of a lack of spontaneity in Amsterdam and Holland. Is it one of your aims to show an underside to the city that tourists and outsiders might not necessarily see?

Good question. Yes, we aim to be a city paper for people who already know the city well and who want to know more about what goes on behind the scenes. So our main focus is ‘the stories behind the news’. This may involve being critical, but we’re just as interested in detailed stories that are a lot of fun. We plan to carry original investigative journalism about the life of the city, and we have several stories of this kind scheduled. One is about the spiralling costs of the new north-south metro line; the other is about some of the people involved in so-called Nigerian scams, of which Amsterdam has become quite a centre.

Are the good times over? What’s your perception of Amsterdam at this point in time and, culturally, how do you see its immediate future?

There does seem to be a swing toward the right in the politics of Holland at the moment. The governing coalition of Christian Democrats and Liberals is definitely right of centre. Social and economic policies which made Holland a by-word for liberal tolerance are being turned around. The number of asylum-seekers has been radically reduced, illegal immigrants are being deported by the planeload, relatively generous unemployment benefits are being scaled back, and labour agreements are getting tougher. In Amsterdam, coffeeshops are being closed down too — but by no means all of them.

Sure, these changes reflect a more general turn to the right in Europe. But it’s hard to say if the changes in Holland are due to the changes in Europe. Like much of the rest of Western Europe, Dutch society has been through a period of modernisation during the last couple of decades and it is becoming more genuinely multi-cultural — certainly in the cities. Are the good times over, then? Somehow, I don’t think so. But if the rightward trend continues the good times may go more underground.

Could a paper like yours exist in Rotterdam?

As an adoptive Amsterdammer I’m kind of honour-bound to be negative about Rotterdam… But actually I quite like it there too. In many ways Amsterdam is very old-fashioned, compared to Rotterdam. Rotterdam is traditionally seen as being mainly a city of business, while Amsterdam is seen as a city of services and culture (though hardly anyone sees it as having a service culture). It’s possible that a paper like ours could work in Rotterdam, but we haven’t looked into it in any detail.

First things first.

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Simon Sellars
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Amsterdam Weekly