Bettina Heltberg. Deadline.

von Zimmermann, Nina

Bettina Heltberg. Deadline. Copenhagen. Gyldendal. 2002. 180 pages. 198 kr. ISBN 87-02-01643-5

THE WELL-KNOWN JOURNALIST Bettina Heltberg, who works for the Danish newspaper Politiken, has written a book on the conditions and pressures journalists encounter in their daily work. Through the lens of her alter ego, a woman with twenty years of experience as a cultural journalist at Dagbladet (read: Politiken), she describes how the change of profile and the organizational restructuring the newspaper must undergo to survive economically leaves the journalists with new working conditions: they feel unsure of themselves and permanently threatened with losing their jobs. What the leaders of the paper praise as an indispensable development toward modernization and improvement of the paper's appearance, the journalist criticizes as selling out the standards of critical journalism, which takes its political responsibility seriously, Moreover, Dagbladet's longstanding traditions of substantial cultural journalism are traded in for sheer colorfulness and shallow trendiness, which points toward a shift of values in society as a whole.

The book is called a novel--a fact that must (ironically) find its explanation in market strategies. It is composed almost solely of reflections and dreams instead of any kind of plot or storyline. What actually takes place is a day in the working routine of the nameless journalist: taking the bus to work, entering the building where she works, entering her office, taking a stroll through downtown Copenhagen in the afternoon, and returning home in the evening. Interwoven with these actions are her thoughts about the developments at the paper, the political situation in Denmark, her dreams about past and future sexual relationships, her divorce, an abortion she had, her absent social relationships with colleagues, her loneliness. She finds herself in a crisis, has serious doubts about her work, feels insecure, and drinks too much. The crisis is taken to its extreme by the fact that she is fired from her job that same day. However, one cannot be sure if that is a fact or just a dream of hers--either way, it does not make a difference in the end. What makes the book interesting is the mixture of the depressive mood of the narrating voice, with its doubts and despairs, with pensive reflections on social and political issues, on Politiken's development, and the allusions to some of the major works of Danish literary modernism (most of all to Tom Kristensen's Havoc).

Nina von Zimmermann

University of Vienna