00:04
Louise Bokkenheuser
I chose J.F. Willumsen's A Mountain Climber. It's a painting from 1912.

00:10
Louise Bokkenheuser
It's a painting of a woman who has climbed to the top of a mountain, and she's standing there in the grass, leaning on her walking stick and looking down into the valley. And there's some clouds above her head, but the sun is coming through. You can almost hear the wind in the mountains and the cows with their bells on just outside the frame.

00:31
Louise Bokkenheuser
Despite the setting, the proportions and the dimensions are human scale. When you think about Caspar David Friedrich, for example, that's a much more man dominating nature. And here, the woman is a piece of the nature.

00:49
Louise Bokkenheuser
By the way the light falls on her, it's maybe late afternoon. Her clothes are kind of the same colors that there are in the landscape. And quite expressionist colors.

00:58
Louise Bokkenheuser
For me, it is a very humanist, quiet painting. It's very serene. There's a sense of achievement, a kind of calm after having done something really hard, like climbed to the top of the mountain.

01:17
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
My name is Tina Jøhnk Christensen, and I'm the host of Danish Originals, a podcast series created in partnership with the American Friends of the National Gallery of Denmark and the National Gallery of Denmark. Our goal is to celebrate Danish creatives who have made a significant mark in the US.

01:35
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Today our guest is Louise Roug Bokkenheuser, a Danish writer. Welcome, Louise.

01:41
Louise Bokkenheuser
Thank you.

01:42
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I would like to start our conversation with a look into your professional world as it is right now. You work in New York and you're currently completing your first novel, How to Organize the World. What is it about? It sounds like it encompasses quite a lot. I mean, organizing the world.

02:03
Louise Bokkenheuser
Really what it's about is the things that we carry with us, and it's about the long shadows of history. It's also an immigration story. So in that way, I guess I'm drawing a little bit from my own life coming from Denmark to America.

02:17
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Is it completed or are you still writing?

02:20
Louise Bokkenheuser
I just finished the first draft and there's going to be some revisions.

02:24
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You are a reporter and you have an education from London and Columbia University in New York and you worked for the LA Times, Newsweek, The Daily Beast and Huffington Post, just to mention a few. Have you always had a novelist waiting to appear inside of you? Or what made you take the jump to write fiction?

02:46
Louise Bokkenheuser
It's such a good question. When I was a child, my parents were big readers, and we had a big collection of books in our house in Copenhagen. And I was a big reader as a child also. I always knew I wanted to write, but becoming an author, it just seemed, to write fiction, it was too big. To write about others, it just seemed more manageable somehow. So I think it's been a long process of overcoming my fear, and just allowing myself to do this.

03:13
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And how did you overcome the fear? What made you decide, I can do it, I want to start doing it now?

03:20
Louise Bokkenheuser
Oh, gosh. I think it's also the realization that life ultimately is short — if I'm gonna do it, now's the time. That was definitely part of it.

03:27
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You have limited time to create an article, but this is a bigger project where you fictionalize characters and the world. What's the main difference you felt when you started?

03:41
Louise Bokkenheuser
I think the biggest difference is, really, in journalism, it's almost like a bound assignment, as you would have it in school. Here are the questions, you have to figure it out. And when you're writing fiction, you actually have to figure out what the questions are. There's no given questions, right? It could look a million ways.

04:01
Louise Bokkenheuser
So I think, figuring out what my questions were, that I was interested in. And I think it has a lot to do with history, as I was saying before. I am interested in our inheritance. What does it mean for the life that we live now?

04:12
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You mentioned that you were reading a lot as a child and that your house was full of books. What were you reading and how did your taste develop? Also, did you have time to read fiction when you were working as a reporter? Sometimes days are long when you are in the field.

04:30
Louise Bokkenheuser
When I was a child, my father would read to us every night. It was a very formative experience sitting next to him on the sofa. He would read Gyldendals Klassikere, a series of classics from the Danish publisher Gyldendal. And it was Jules Verne, and Charles Dickens, and Victor Hugo, and all the classics, Mark Twain. He would read those to us.

04:55
Louise Bokkenheuser
So those were the earliest books. And then, I'm a pretty, I wouldn't say indiscriminate, but I read a lot and very varied books. I don't have one particular genre or a type of thing. Even when I was a war correspondent and living in Baghdad, I had found time to read. Though I think that was the hardest time because there was so much going on, and you were so distracted all the time. Just the life itself was so kind of difficult, not just finding the time, but finding the concentration, really, to read. That was difficult.

05:24
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And what were your inspirations for your own book? Was there a book that you read where you thought, ah, I can imagine myself doing something like this? Or books that you read, where you felt inspired your own writing?

05:39
Louise Bokkenheuser
I think one book that I read fairly recently, and even after I started writing my own book, but a novel I love, was Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, the German writer. It's a fantastic book. I highly recommend it. It's a story about an older man and a younger woman and their relationship in Germany, Eastern Germany, before the fall of the wall.

05:59
Louise Bokkenheuser
And then their relationship, it kind of falls apart. But it falls apart against the backdrop of the falling apart of Eastern Germany, and the wall coming down. So it's the end of this affair, but it's also the end of a certain way of life in Germany. And I think it's quite masterfully done. It's a slim novel, and in some ways quite simple, but really masterful.

06:22
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You have published one book before the novel. It's non-fiction and a kind of autobiography, Hvad Der Ikke Slår Dig Ihjel: reportager fra København og Bagdad. It's translated as What Doesn't Kill You: Reports from Copenhagen and Baghdad. It was written in a self-created writing retreat in Sicily. Why did you decide to go to Italy to write this book? And can you describe the place where you were? It sounds very exotic.

06:55
Louise Bokkenheuser
Yeah, it was a beautiful place. I was fortunate enough to have a friend who had a little cottage that I could borrow, so I spent some months there writing the book. It was interesting because in some ways, it was about the war in Iraq, but it was also about my parents and my growing up in Copenhagen.

07:10
Louise Bokkenheuser
My father kept a journal every day, and so I had brought these journals with me. And so in a way, being in this little cottage in the middle of Sicily, I was also at the same time in Copenhagen, because I was in Copenhagen through the journals, and in a totally different time and place.

07:26
Louise Bokkenheuser
It's a funny book because it has this Copenhagen part about my childhood and growing up in Copenhagen, and then this part of being a war correspondent, and being witness to some of the bloodiest days of the Iraq war.

07:40
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And I'll return to that. But I can't help but ask. Your dad had a journal and he read for you Dickens and Jules Verne. He sounds like an interesting man. What did he do for a living, and how would you describe your father?

07:54
Louise Bokkenheuser
That's a very funny question, because he was actually a journalist. And then he quit journalism, because he thought it was a totally dishonest profession. And then he became—

08:03
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
We're supposed to be very honest.

08:06
Louise Bokkenheuser
I know, and then he went into advertising instead, because at least that was an honest profession. And I still actually have his press badge from the 1960s, the kind that you would put in your hat. And he was a very interesting man. And I think both my parents were writers in different ways.

08:24
Louise Bokkenheuser
And so when I was a child, that was the first sound I would hear when I came home after school, the sound of their typewriters in unison, because they had offices next to each other. So in my childhood home, it was a lot of reading and writing, and my grandfather was a painter and there was this whole idea that being a creator was really the most meaningful thing a person could do.

08:45
Louise Bokkenheuser
So some people might be brought up with the idea that the pursuit of wealth or status is important. And that was not the case in my childhood home. The artist as a creative was really held in high regard at home.

08:59
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Where did you grow up in Copenhagen?

09:01
Louise Bokkenheuser
So I was born in Østerbro, but basically grew up in Læderstræde in central Copenhagen. And it was a whole house there on the street. And it's a house from the 17th century. So it's one of the older houses in Copenhagen. And it's funny because my brother, who lived in America for a while as well, just moved back to Denmark. And he just bought an apartment on the same street, just down the block, returning to our roots there. But yeah, as I said, it had lots of books, lots of paintings. Creativity was very, very much prized at home.

09:35
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You were in Iraq for the LA Times, and you lived in Baghdad for several years, I believe, from 2004 to 2007. Is that correct?

09:44
Louise Bokkenheuser
That's correct, yeah.

09:46
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
In the book you write about how rough your upbringing was in Copenhagen and how the war and being in the midst of it solved your problems. Explain what you meant by this.

09:58
Louise Bokkenheuser
Basically, it has two parts. The first part of my childhood was quite idyllic, as much as any childhood is idyllic. And then my mother died in a tragic accident when she was very young and I was very young. I was 13.

10:09
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I am sorry.

10:10
Louise Bokkenheuser
And my father, he was so devastated that he basically drank himself to death.

10:14
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I am sorry, Louise.

10:16
Louise Bokkenheuser
So it was just — yeah, it was tough. And then in very short succession, we lost our house and all the things. So it was me and my younger brother. Of course it was devastating, but from a point of view of, when you're a child, and you grow older, and you become a teenager and then a young person, you build towards something — I think for me, my first formative experience was about loss and dissolution and losing a lot of things.

10:44
Louise Bokkenheuser
And also I learned a lot about human nature in various ways, both for myself, but my parents, people around us. It was a formative period. Of course, it shaped my life and who I am. And also shaped, I think, the decision to leave Denmark. Because I think Denmark, or Copenhagen, became this place of ghosts for me. So if I could leave Denmark, then I could maybe leave my past behind, in a way. I left very soon after, as soon as I could, as soon as I'd finished high school.

11:16
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And you said that Iraq was weirdly, I don't know if it's weird, but a process of healing for you. What was it about this place of catastrophe and war and suffering that made you find a way to heal?

11:35
Louise Bokkenheuser
I think also it was a place where I found some very great friendships. And I think there was a meaning in reporting. I think that is the thing, that journalism has a real sense of mission and sense of purpose. So even when you're covering something that's as terrible as a war, what you do in that moment is meaningful. That idea of bearing witness can be quite rewarding.

12:04
Louise Bokkenheuser
And I think we were not that many people in Iraq. We were, I think, maybe 25 journalists at most who lived in Baghdad and mostly from American newspapers. And we lived in the city. One great misconception was that we lived in the Green Zone and we didn't, we lived in the city.

12:18
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Did you live in the Hamra?

12:19
Louise Bokkenheuser
Yeah, yeah. A great hotel. I'm not even sure it still exists, but it was a great hotel and we had a lot of journalists living there and in the immediate vicinity and they became very close friends, both the Iraqi journalists and the American journalists.

12:33
Louise Bokkenheuser
And there's also something about seeing this moment where really, everything is at stake. And you really, you see, of course, some really truly horrible things, but you also see great acts of courage and generosity and so on. So I think it just was a very meaningful experience.

12:52
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Talk about Hamra and how your life was in Baghdad, your daily life. Could you have some normalcy? Could you make — you mentioned friends, but how do you make friends? How is life as a war correspondent in this hotel, which was of course, with big security around it and stuff. So it wasn't like living in a hotel, like when we go traveling. Try to explain to people who've never been and who cannot imagine what it's like.

13:23
Louise Bokkenheuser
Yeah, I think one of the things that people ask a lot is, were you ever afraid? And I think what's hard to maybe imagine is that you're afraid all the time. You're always in danger. And so this may be the wrong word, but you're in this constant state of vigilance. And so even in this hotel where it was, as you say, barricaded and had security, twice there was a car bomb that rammed into the hotel. In one case, it had a thousand pounds of explosives and I think 11 people died within the compound.

13:56
Louise Bokkenheuser
And wherever you were, wherever I was, if I was in the street reporting or going out shopping, I was in danger. Or if I was with the Americans and I was in a helicopter, for example, I was in danger. We could get shot down. If I was in a convoy, we could hit a roadside bomb. You were always constantly in danger.

14:16
Louise Bokkenheuser
And I think that kind of hypervigilance, it took some years afterwards to almost unwind, because it's this constant stress. But the daily life beyond that, I went to the market. Early on, when it was still possible, I would try and grow roses on the balcony where I lived and, and so on. And we would try and cook and have dinner parties and so on. And you strive for normalcy even under these extraordinary circumstances.

14:45
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What were the common traits of war correspondents? Are you a certain kind of breed, you think?

14:56
Louise Bokkenheuser
Yeah, it's interesting. I think there's a lot of mythology around the war correspondent. And I sometimes look at some war correspondents and it feels some of it is self-created mythologies. I would say the thing that I had in common with my colleagues there in Baghdad was a real curiosity and interest in the country. I think that's what united us.

15:19
Louise Bokkenheuser
And I think there was a great camaraderie also. Because you are in this very dangerous situation, you shared information, and I think more so than you do, maybe. If you're normally in a kind of competitive relationship with another journalist, you might not share information in that way, but we did.

15:37
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You said they were mainly American press. Did you feel you stood out as a Dane?

15:41
Louise Bokkenheuser
There was actually one other Danish person, who was a photographer, Johan Spanner, for The New York Times, so we would hang out sometimes also. But, we were so much in the same boat, I think, with the Americans that we didn't.

15:54
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
War and destruction and human misery is not for the faint hearted. How did you deal with everything that you saw: the innocent victims and the suffering population of Iraqis, and also the American soldiers?

16:09
Louise Bokkenheuser
As a journalist, you have your notebook, and it's almost like the notebook is kind of a shield, right? It puts the screen between you and whatever you're looking at. So, yes, I did see some terrifying things and some very upsetting things, but again, you have a job to do. And I think it's almost like being a police officer or an ambulance personnel or a medic. You have a job to do and in that moment, you have to put your emotions aside so that you can do your job.

16:37
Louise Bokkenheuser
So I think in the moment, that's how you deal with it, and then later you have to hopefully process that. But not everyone does and I think there was definitely, among that press corps, there were some people who just kept going to another war and another war and another war. And it felt it became more of an escape, and never stopping to kind of wonder why they were doing what they were doing.

17:03
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
When you look back on your days in Iraq, do you feel there is a Louise before going there, and another Louise after Iraq?

17:12
Louise Bokkenheuser
That's a good question. Yes, I would definitely say that. On the simplest level, because it gave me a lot of professional confidence. I was at the LA Times at the time, we were nine hours ahead of LA in Baghdad, which meant that the day was almost over by the time they woke up in LA and got into the office. So I had to make the decisions.

17:32
Louise Bokkenheuser
Okay, am I covering this or this? Or how am I going to prioritize my time? What stories am I going to pursue? Where normally you would maybe have that conversation with your editor or you would be assigned things. You had a high degree of autonomy, which I really liked. I don't love having bosses, so it really suited me in that way. So yeah, it gave me professional confidence, I think.

17:52
Louise Bokkenheuser
And then I think, you have to think about, as we were talking about earlier, those things that you see and the things that we are capable of, of the kind of pain we're capable of inflicting on each other as human beings. And I think seeing that, I came away thinking, I think it changed how I think about how we organize society, what things are important, yeah, the meaning of history. Again, you realize life is short.

18:20
Louise Bokkenheuser
And then also, where Iraq ended up. When I was younger, I worked in a refugee camp in the Balkans during the war in Bosnia, and when I came to Iraq, it was after the invasion, but before it became a civil war in Iraq. And my Iraqi friends would say, Oh, but it's not going to be a civil war here. Yeah, we have different sects, but we are never going to turn against each other.

18:44
Louise Bokkenheuser
And I said, well, but that's what they said in Bosnia. I mean, and I think, it's not a Bosnian thing. It's not an Iraqi thing. It could happen anywhere. It could happen in America. It could probably even happen in Denmark. Hard to imagine.

18:57
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
When I met you here in LA, you were also working for the LA Times. I remember you writing for different sections, I believe, entertainment at the time, I'm not sure. How did you end up being sent to Iraq?

19:11
Louise Bokkenheuser
It's true. I have covered a lot of different things, including Hollywood and gossip and things like that, and it was my least favorite job I think I've had. But I think I was always interested in becoming a foreign correspondent, a war correspondent to cover conflict.

19:25
Louise Bokkenheuser
I think there was something about it that drew me and I think it maybe started in Bosnia. It was a way in which I didn't understand, I'd grown up in the '70s and '80s, and the Third Reich and the Holocaust were so impossible, in a way, to understand. And this idea of never again was a thing we really were constantly reminded of. And we went to see Theresienstadt in school, and so on.

19:52
Louise Bokkenheuser
And then the war in Bosnia happened, and they were not extermination camps, but you had camps in Europe again. And to see how that happens, and the way that the politicians suddenly quickly explained it away, and suddenly it was, they were not Europeans, and they were "other."

20:10
Louise Bokkenheuser
And how quickly we can kind of distance ourselves from things when they become too, I mean, we're just very quick to explain away that we, too, could be these people, not inside the camps, but in the guard towers, right? I think I'm very interested in that question of what we are capable of in terms of how we treat our fellow human beings. And as I said before, I think we are all capable of great cruelties, unfortunately.

20:41
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You use two different names, Louise Roug to define the professional reporter, and Louise Bokkenheuser, the private person. Why is this convenient? And I cannot help but ask, where does Bokkenheuser stem from?

20:57
Louise Bokkenheuser
Okay. So actually, I should say, in Danish, I pronounce it, "Roug," and that is the proper pronunciation, it's my grandmother's maiden name. In English, I pronounce it "Rogue." I took it, it was not my name. Bokkenheuser is my real legal name, but I took Roug as a name because I thought it would be easier for people to spell. It was just a pen name, if you will. Bokkenheuser is my family.

21:21
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Is it foreign? Is your family from somewhere else in Europe?

21:27
Louise Bokkenheuser
Yes, in the 17th century, they were executioners in Germany, they chopped the heads of people, somebody found out.

21:34
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Lovely family history!

21:36
Louise Bokkenheuser
Yes.

21:38
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You went back to Copenhagen for a little while, where you worked for Radio24syv. What made you make that move, and why did you not stay? Did Denmark not feel like home to you anymore? Was the vibe less exciting than in New York, or, what was it?

21:57
Louise Bokkenheuser
So, Radio24syv was launching at a moment when I was working for Newsweek and it had been a really tough period. I was the foreign editor of Newsweek and for a year, there had been just a nonstop series of very big foreign stories, including the Arab Spring and Fukushima, and it was just one thing after another. And I had also lost a very good friend, who was a photographer who was killed in Libya.

22:22
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Sorry.

22:22
Louise Bokkenheuser
And I was really burned out on my job, it was a highly stressful job. I was back in Denmark, and I was meeting with a friend who worked at Radio24syv, which was about to launch. And one of the people at Radio24syv saw that I could be persuaded, and made a very strong pitch to come to Denmark and work-life balance. She gave me the pitch at the right moment.

22:45
Louise Bokkenheuser
And so I thought, oh, work-life balance, that sounds interesting, I've never tried that. And so I came back, and it was really great fun launching a radio program. Globus, it was called, and it was about current affairs, foreign affairs. And we had guests on, and a fellow host, and it was super fun.

23:05
Louise Bokkenheuser
And then after a while, I was like, wow — this should be said, gosh, this was, I don't even remember, 2011, 2012, so it's many years ago. And Copenhagen I think has changed a lot in the intervening years, but back then it was still like on a Sunday afternoon in January, not a lot going on. And so after a while, I was getting a little blue there on Sundays in January.

23:27
Louise Bokkenheuser
And also, the woman I had worked for, she kind of created a pressure campaign and made me come back. She kept emailing me saying, okay, when are you done with your sabbatical in Copenhagen? We need you back in the office. So eventually I gave up and I came back.

23:43
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
That's interesting. You've received a lot of awards for your reporting. You were a Pulitzer finalist and the Ebbe Munck Prize, you received in 2016 for your coverage of the war in Iraq. It was given to you by the Queen of Denmark. How would you describe the experience of receiving an award like this?

24:05
Louise Bokkenheuser
Oh my God. Well, for one thing, of course, it was a great honor, but also, should be noted, the award ceremony, which takes place in Christiansborg in one of the halls there, took place the day after Trump was elected the first time around. I had written this whole speech about journalism and how journalism was doing a great job, and I basically woke up in the morning and I realized I couldn't give the speech because we, as journalists, had missed the biggest story, which was that Trump was going to be elected.

24:35
Louise Bokkenheuser
And I had to, in some way, take note of the fact that we now had a new American president and with everything that meant. That morning I was very busy, I rewrote the speech. And then I went to get my award and give my speech and meet the Queen. It was a very kind of festive occasion, full of ceremony. And yeah, it was a great experience. But confusing because of everything that had happened.

24:59
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
How does one speak to the Queen of Denmark? And what does the Queen of Denmark say to you when she meets you? Sorry to be so specific.

25:09
Louise Bokkenheuser
We had a great conversation and apparently the way it works, after that was a little wine reception and you sit and you chat with the Queen, and she'll make some kind of little gesture to one of her people and then at some point they will come and take you away. And normally, I was told she would speak with the recipient of the prize for a few minutes.

25:32
Louise Bokkenheuser
But we had a long conversation and I think she was very interested in this whole idea of both my experience as a war correspondent, and of course she herself has traveled a lot and is very interested in the world, but also, of course, Trump, and what it meant.

25:44
Louise Bokkenheuser
And I remember one of the things she said, because I had said something about, well, you know, the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice. And she said, yes. With a reference to Trump, she said, this is just a burp in the history of time. And then she repeated in Danish, det er kun en bøvs. I think, wow, that's really amazing. The Queen of Denmark is telling me that Trump is a burp in history.

26:09
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
That is hilarious.

26:11
Louise Bokkenheuser
Yeah.

26:12
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Even though Iraq and Baghdad was such a revelation for you, you decided not to go back to cover another war like many of your colleagues did, one war after the other. Why not?

26:23
Louise Bokkenheuser
It's a good question. I think at that time also, for me, it was the first war I'd covered and I was so invested in that particular story. I mean, it's not a story. It was the lives that people led and the reality that they were living in. But for me, it wasn't just to go to another place, like Afghanistan.

26:42
Louise Bokkenheuser
The point was not just to be a war correspondent, the point was to cover a particular story, or a particular series of events that were happening in Baghdad. And, I mean, I guess I did cover other trouble and conflict. I lived in Lebanon, and there was a series of bombing, bomb attacks there. And I was in Jerusalem and Gaza.

27:01
Louise Bokkenheuser
But I think the idea of life as a war correspondent… It's Tuesday, what is this? Oh, this must be Afghanistan. This idea of the loose — not just the sense of place of where you are, but also the sense of home. It was important for me to come home. I saw a lot of people who seemed to me to be quite rootless. And they were just always with a backpack going somewhere, covering something. It didn't appeal to me.

27:29
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You have spoken about the current times and a little bit about the past, but I want to go back in time now to when you were a young woman and had just graduated from Zahles Gymnasium, a high school. You decided to become a reporter. Was it always something that you wanted, and what was it about being a reporter that spoke to you? You mentioned the Balkans before, but what about the craft that was appealing to you?

28:00
Louise Bokkenheuser
I think I'm somebody who's always asking questions and very curious, so in that way, temperamentally, I was well suited to it. I think because my father had been a journalist, even though he had left the profession, I think that kind of maybe also gave me the idea. And I liked writing, and I like meeting people and asking questions. It just seemed like that this was kind of a perfect job for me.

28:23
Louise Bokkenheuser
It was important for me, I really remember, not wanting a job that was a nine-to-five job. I didn't want to go to an office and sit in front of a computer nine to five. I wanted something where there was no distinction between work and play, like everything should be of a piece. So I think that's what drew me to journalism.

28:42
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You're also an experienced editor. You worked as an editor at The Huffington Post, I believe from '17 to '21, for instance. As an editor, you're also very much a leader. Is this a job that comes easy to you? Do you like leading or working in teams?

29:04
Louise Bokkenheuser
Yes, I do. I think one of the things that's great about journalism is in some ways, it's an individual sport, but it's also a team sport. You're doing your own thing, always, in some ways, whether you're writing or editing, but you're also part of a greater whole, whether it's the paper that needs to come out of the magazine or whatever.

29:23
Louise Bokkenheuser
So, of course you could be a journalist and be a freelance journalist, for example, but you still have to deal with other people and you have to talk to the people that you interview and so on. So, I like that. I like that you're not alone, I mean, you do something yourself, but you're also always working with other people.

29:41
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And leading other people?

29:43
Louise Bokkenheuser
Oh gosh, you would have to ask other people.

29:46
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
No, but do you like it?

29:48
Louise Bokkenheuser
Do I like it? Yeah. If I'm good at it is another question. Yeah. I do.

29:51
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I am sure you are if you get rehired all the time. Come on.

29:56
Louise Bokkenheuser
I do like it. And I think the whole trick is that you've got to figure out what is the thing that only you can do and do only that, get out of the way. I think I see a lot of people who micromanage, or they get in other people's way, or they want to do their jobs for them. Trust that other people can do their job, you know?

30:16
Louise Bokkenheuser
And so I think one of the most fun things when I've been an editor and led various things, is always finding who the talented people are — ambitious, energetic, curious — finding all the talent. That's really fun. Helping other people get their career going, I love that.

30:36
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You've been a reporter in the US for more than two decades now. Have you felt a change in the landscape of the media in the US the past 20 years since the fake news comments. Journalists and mainstream news, all of a sudden, were under attack, and YouTubers and bloggers, who were not professional reporters, claim to report the news. How would you describe this change in the US in particular?

31:06
Louise Bokkenheuser
I think the most obvious change is the deaths of newspapers. When I was starting out 25 years ago, they had a lot of local papers, a lot of reporters who would go to the local school board meetings and the local council meetings and so on. And they would report on local issues, corruption, and so on. And that's all gone.

31:32
Louise Bokkenheuser
I don't know that that has been replaced by something else, I'm not sure what draws people to YouTube is to watch council meetings. I think on a very basic level, the function that journalism can play in a democracy, I think has been hollowed out.

31:49
Louise Bokkenheuser
Today we have three big papers still, biggish papers in the US. It's The New York Times, obviously, and then The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, and then The LA Times, and there's other papers. Except for The New York Times, they're all struggling financially, have had to lay off, really shrink their newsrooms, have pulled back from their foreign coverage, have pulled back from their investigative coverage.

32:13
Louise Bokkenheuser
And I think that has a real consequence for democracy. And then I think, I mean, as you talked about, also, with the fake news and the idea of the mainstream press and so on, I mean, I think there's a collapse of the journalism business. And then that goes hand in hand also with something about our credibility under attack.

32:34
Louise Bokkenheuser
And I think people might not understand what differentiates a journalist at The New York Times with a blogger or a YouTuber or whatever. And there is a big difference, because there are some norms and in some cases, people may not have gone to journalism school. But there are definitely norms and expectations and rules within a newsroom regarding fairness, and how you do a story and making sure that the facts are accurate and so on. And that somebody who has a Substack is not under those constraints in the same way.

33:13
Louise Bokkenheuser
This is a very obvious observation, but we are in this attention economy, and there's so much stuff out there for people to consume. And if you don't understand that there is a difference — if you haven't learned that there's a difference between The New York Times and some random YouTuber, it gets tricky, because then how do you sift fact from fiction? How do you know what's true?

33:37
Louise Bokkenheuser
And I think right now we do live also in a society where the President and his cabinet, there's a certain shamelessness around lying. So, if you don't believe The New York Times, then I'm not sure what to tell you. I mean, it's worrying. It really is worrying.

34:00
Louise Bokkenheuser
I'm glad to see that in Denmark, for example, it seems to not have come quite that far. And there's still a robust readership for the papers. And I think it's a crisis. It's being talked about a lot at the moment, a crisis of reading. And yes, this is an age-old kind of lament, people have stopped reading. But I do think the moment people stop reading, we're in trouble.

34:23
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
There's also a big difference as I see it between Denmark and the US that relates to the media. In Denmark, we actually trust the government, we trust each other, but we also trust that the reporters reading the news do a fact-based and objective job when they deliver the news to us. Isn't that the case, that there is a difference there?

34:45
Louise Bokkenheuser
I think that's true. I also think the context is very different in Denmark because I think people are much more in accord in terms of what are the norms, there's a higher degree of agreement, if you will, it's a more homogenous society. And you don't have these kinds of polls as you have here.

35:01
Louise Bokkenheuser
I mean, you have elected representatives who believe in conspiracy theories and aliens. You don't have that in Denmark. So I think in America, it's a much wider kind of field, whereas in Denmark, it's a very consensus-based society.

35:21
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
How do you navigate as a reporter and as an editor in a climate like that?

35:28
Louise Bokkenheuser
I don't know that you should do things differently. I think you have to retain and respect those professional ethics that have always guided the profession.

35:41
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
But a lot of outlets, for instance, are dependent on clicks, click baits. You hear, I hear, from editors, Oh, that story didn't get enough clicks, can you twist it like this? Which becomes an issue if you are a very serious reporter.

36:00
Louise Bokkenheuser
And that is part of the reason why we are where we are, is that, right? Because nothing gets as many eyeballs as conflict and strife, and stuff you can get angry about. A long, explanatory piece of journalism may be very important, but not get as much traffic. But I think it's still very important that we do those kinds of pieces.

36:24
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You are an American citizen. When did you decide that you wanted to take this step and why? And still Danish, too, I believe, right?

36:35
Louise Bokkenheuser
It was during the first Trump presidency, and I thought, I had been here so long, and I had never taken the steps, because I never thought it would be an issue for me staying here in this country. And then I thought, oh, maybe I should actually legalize my status. I mean, I was legal before, but, solidify my status.

36:54
Louise Bokkenheuser
And so I became a citizen, so it's basically so I could vote in the elections. And it was a very moving ceremony. It was in a courthouse in Brooklyn and there were hundreds of other people becoming Americans that day and it was very moving.

37:09
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I was outside, it was during COVID, so it was pretty beautiful too. I read your opinion in the Danish newspaper, Politiken, and it was written after the election in November 2024. Without becoming too political, you said that you personally no longer believe in a future in the US after the election results came out, and you indicated that you no longer felt at home in the US.

37:33
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I was wondering if the situation is so bad that your suitcases are already packed. Are you preparing to leave or have you reconsidered after the thought settled in?

37:49
Louise Bokkenheuser
I think the initial shock has maybe abated somewhat, but I still think we don't know. There's a wide, wide range of scenarios here in terms of where America goes. And I think that would determine where I go. I think we could end in a really dark place. So I think the jury's still out. We don't know yet what it looks like, what America looks like in two years, or in three years. As a former war reporter, you always have your bags at the door.

38:19
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Literally?

38:20
Louise Bokkenheuser
No.

38:24
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Okay, so my final question to you, Louise, I could go on talking to you forever, but we have to end it somewhere. Where would you like to be when you grow old? Do you see yourself, now we just talked about maybe leaving the US, do you see yourself here? Do you see yourself in Denmark? Do you see yourself somewhere else in Europe?

38:46
Louise Bokkenheuser
I could see a situation where I divide my time between here and Denmark. I think there's many, many wonderful things about Denmark. And now also, I have family there, and my brother has moved back. And I think also it's become a more open country, maybe than it has been before.A lot of it is very exciting, and it feels when you're in Copenhagen, there's a lot of exciting things going on, a lot of openness in the city. I could see spending more time there.

39:12
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Well, Louise, thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate that you were on Danish Originals.

39:20
Louise Bokkenheuser
Yeah, of course. It was a pleasure.

39:26
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
For today's episode, Louise Roug Bokkenheuser chose J.F. Willumsen's En bjergbestigerske, or A Mountain Climber from 1912 from the collection of the National Gallery of Denmark.