Len Maessen

Background

About Len Maessen

Hi! I'm a journalist, currently working for NRC Handelsblad as part of its Slim Leven (Smart Living) team. At Slim Leven, we focus on practical journalism that can help our readers in their daily lives. Beyond that, I am also the paper's resident gaming journalist. My primary interests lay in gaming culture and video game criticism, artificial intelligence research and the intersection of tech and culture in general. I'm also interested in foreign politics, especially in the United States and the Middle-East. I graduated from the Fontys School for Journalism in 2014, majoring in broadcast journalism. My expertise lies in niche journalism, specifically gaming and local journalism, with a broad interest in media academics and new media-related topics. I am an excellent writer and have completed several courses in the area of television journalism. Beyond that, I keep an active interest in developments in the area of gaming journalism as a whole and newsgames as a storytelling tool. In my free time, I have managed and continue to manage small text-based multiplayer roleplaying games, which is an excellent grassroots way to polish up both your storytelling and your improvising skills. I've spent the past twenty years of my life - starting with a childhood obsession with Qbasic - working with computers in general and the internet in particular. While I am in no way a full-blown sysadmin, my love of technology and software remains and I enjoy mastering new forms of editing software and audiovisual tech, as well as discovering new corners of the world wide web. You can contact me via len.mariken@runbox.com.