interference and accepts his eagerness to experiment with genres and styles (IW Data, Kongstad, 09:41:35 - 09:43:34). This supports the notion that institutional affiliation conditions the persona-performing space.
Coincident with his work in journalism, Kongstad worked as a copywriter for several big Danish companies, a drummer in different bands, a theatre play and revue writer, and a screen actor in various productions, most notably the 1997 film Let’s Get Lost directed by Jonas Elmer. Kongstad has also published a number of short stories as well as three novels, some of which narrated by the voice of his alter ego, Mikkel Vallin, a voice that is also used in some of his cultural criticism, as I shall demonstrate in the analysis below. He is currently (September 2018) working on a new novel and is on leave from his job at Radio24syv, which also demonstrates how he alternates between an author practice and a journalism practice.
Kongstad’s affiliation with both a journalistic and an artistic sphere is important to consider when doing a persona analysis. His affiliation with both spheres seems to support findings from cultural journalism scholars such as Hellmann and Jaakola (2012) and Kristensen & From (2011b), who have pointed to cultural journalists often being situated in both an aesthetic and a journalistic paradigm, as discussed in the research context of this dissertation.
Many of the persona-performing elements in Kongstad’s practice seem to come from a more artistic sphere, some explicitly belonging to fiction writing such as the use of fictitious dialogue as well as drawing from the techniques of literary variations of journalism by for instance using a journalistic alter ego.
Kongstad is in many ways a writer/artist who is moonlighting as a journalist/critic. Addressing the question of whether he is mostly an author or a journalist, Kongstad says:
“I was already, I think from my early 20s, I knew that’s what I wanted to be (an author). But I just had to find a way to learn how to write first.”
(IW data, Kongstad, 09:31:17)
Kongstad believes that journalism was a way to become an author. Journalism presented itself as a kind of training ground, allowing Kongstad to try out various writing styles and approaches in order to qualify himself as an author. This is supported by research by, for example, Forde (2003) and Harries & Wahl-Jorgensen (2007), which suggests that cultural journalists do not identify themselves with the profession of being a journalist but rather think of themselves as writers.
Kongstad’s phrasing in the quote above also suggests that Kongstad identifies primarily with the arts sphere and his desire to be or become an author. This is underlined more explicitly in the following quote, where Kongstad responds to a question asking whether clients hire him to do a Kongstad type of journalism:
IW: “Yes, then they want to have some kind of a quirky angle, right? But that happened more in the past”
IP: “Okay”
IW: “It happened more back when I was kind of more like a real journalist. When I worked as a journalist. Primarily. And I stopped doing that in 1998.”
(IW Data, Kongstad, 09:59:07 - 10:00:43)
It is unclear whether this way of drawing a line in his career between being primarily a journalist and now primarily something else is a result of income concerns, or whether it is a kind of identity negotiation with himself. When glancing at his CV, it seems that most of Kongstad’s permanent positions within the established journalism environment go back to the 1980s and 1990s (cf.
appendix K). By the late 90s, he was more involved in the artistic sphere and some freelance work within journalism. Kongstad debuted as a fiction writer in 1997 with a short story, so this may have guided the direction of his career.
At other times during the interview, however, Kongstad underlines the financial aspect: journalism continues to provide a basic salary, which is important when you are (not yet) an established author (IW Data, Kongstad, 09:39:11). The radio show “Bearnaise is the King of all Animals”, which premiered in 2014, was actually launched as a result of Kongstad’s financial problems. According to the interview, his finances were so poor that he did not have enough money to pay rent (IW data, Kongstad, 09:28:19). I would argue that this supports the scholarship claiming that cultural journalists are often situated in a more precarious job market and more often on freelance
contracts compared to journalists in other beats (Hovden & Knapskog, 2015; Hovden & Kristensen, 2018, Kristensen & From, forthcoming).
Throughout the interview, Kongstad addresses the differences between journalism and fiction writing or other more creative and artistic kinds of work as he phrases it. He seems to enjoy the liberty of the creative genres (such as the novel), but he also mentions a constant interest in the
journalistic genres and a desire to try to expand or challenge the characteristics of these genres (IW Data, Kongstad, 09:34:38). This data supports the notion that Kongstad is quite knowledgeable about how the genres work and what they normally entail. The following quote addressing the journalistic setup in interviews exemplifies this kind of knowledge:
IP: “Deep down, I just wanted to write my own stuff, right? So, I often had this sensation, when I sat in front of artists, who I had to interview - often musicians - that I felt bad about that role, that I should pretend to be someone from the other side. I mostly just wanted to join them”
IW: “Right”
IP: “Which of course is some kind of mess, right? You do have these clearly defined roles. You also ask me questions in this interview, right? I just often wanted … and I always hung around
afterwards and sometimes I began to sit and jam a bit with them. I just happened to walk over to the other side, afterwards, right?”
(IW Data, Kongstad, 09:47:54 – 09:48:52)
Kongstad seems conscious of the inherent logics in journalism, in this case the clearly defined roles between a journalist and his interviewees. He also clearly struggles to accept this logic and seems to have an urge to break it down or ignore it. This likely has to do with Kongstad’s background as a semi-professional musician, but it probably also illustrates the identity negotiation that I touched upon above.
On several occasions, Kongstad has resisted the established logics of journalism such as fairness, balance and objectivity (Franklin et al, 2005). The most explicit example comes from a series of summer articles he did for national daily Politiken in 1996. The interview data reveals that he was tired of doing articles that resembled articles done by everyone else (the quirky summer reports) and wanted to do something different (IW Data, Kongstad, 09:42:26 - 09:43:25). He was inspired by the Danish hip hop band Malk de Koijn, who referred to a made-up a Danish municipality in their songs. Kongstad decided to use this fictitious municipality as the basis of one of his summer reports, pretending the place was real. Eventually the experiment led to Kongstad being fired from his freelance job at Politiken. In section 8.3.2, I will analyze this particular piece and address how it conflicted with journalism logics and can be seen as part of Kongstad’s persona elucidating
practice.
It is in many ways the overflow between journalism and arts that characterizes Kongstad’ persona performances and makes his practice an example of the blurring boundaries specifically within cultural journalism that I discussed in chapter 1 and 2. Kongstad seems to play with and
occasionally tries to expand the logics of journalism and cultural criticism. Occasionally, as in the example of the fictitious summer report in Politiken, he crosses the line to such an extent that he can no longer be included in the sphere of journalism. This borderline practice is not unique to Kongstad, but, as outlined in chapter 2, has its historical precedents in new journalism and gonzo-style reporting (Isager, 2006; Weingarten, 2005; Klit, 1983) and in cultural journalists’ tradition of being outsider journalists on the fringes of the profession (Jaakola, 2015).
In Kongstad’s case, the practice seems to stem at least partly from his author/novelist ambitions using journalism as a training ground for his writing, which causes him to take on an experimental approach. He cannot just do journalism in the sphere of journalism because that would just make him a journalist and he clearly has ambitions of being or becoming an artist. The following analysis focuses on these overflows between journalism and arts and investigates how they function in the performance of the Kongstad persona.