Yes, we call this period ‘cucumber time’ because it is indeed the time when cucumbers are harvested. The cucumber plant grows at its best when the weather is warm and there is plenty of light. In other words: in summer. Maurice Vergeer, Assistant Professor at the study programme in Communication Science: “But it mainly refers to a period with few newsworthy events. In fact, cucumber time occurs not only in summer, but also in winter. While it is difficult to pinpoint exactly when cucumber time officially begins and ends, it can be linked to the times when Parliament is in recess.”
With political life falling silent, there is little ‘news’ to report. Vergeer: “This applies to both political and economic news. Although around Christmastime, the news is still full of stories about the Pope and people flocking to the furniture malls. The latter suddenly counts as ‘news’.”
Because, as Vergeer explains, the evening news is not cut short during cucumber time and dailies continue to appear in the same circulation. Admittedly with a bit more space for advertisements. “With fewer newsworthy events, journalists are more likely to search for news. But that is their profession. Although things are considered news that wouldn't normally be seen as such outside cucumber time.”
No cutting-edge science
This means that a news item during cucumber time is still more likely to appear in the paper than to end up in the bin in the newsroom. Vergeer: “What makes something news or no news? Geographical distance is important: the closer the event takes place, the better. News about the elite is often interesting. So are events involving large numbers of people. In addition, images always work well. The fact that there were images of the crashed plane in Nepal's capital Kathmandu certainly contributed to it being so widely reported on. During cucumber time, the threshold for viewing an event as news is a bit lower. After all, the news and newspaper pages have to be filled.”
Lieneke van Dijk works as a press and science communication officer at Radboud University. It is her job to make sure Radboud University research reaches the widest audience possible. She admits that providing journalists with news during cucumber time requires a slightly different approach: “During cucumber time, we get far fewer calls from journalists looking for experts to interpret the news. The topics I personally share with journalists during this period tend to be a bit more accessible, so no cutting-edge science. After all, it's not what people are looking for in summer.”
Typical cucumber time
Vergeer remembers well that, for a while, the NOS evening news took an interesting approach to cucumber time. “Now I think about it, it's a shame they stopped doing it, as it worked rather well. As a standard, the evening news included an item by a foreign correspondent working in a holiday country. Every day you got to see an item from a different city: Rome, Paris, or Madrid. The correspondent showed in a short item what was happening in the city in question, and you got a glimpse of the culture. Call it human interest but with a topical hook: the summer season.”
A typical example of recent news during cucumber time concerned the mirror trick in Italy. Vergeer: “I read that tourists are warned about Italian con artists on the motorway. They throw a stone against your car and then claim that you drove into their car mirror. These are things you can write about in detail during cucumber time. Or that people are advised to avoid the route periferique on their way to the South of France because of the Olympics. It's almost consumer information.”
However, Vergeer does see an opportunity for students to take advantage of cucumber time to engage with the news. “Every year I ask my students at the beginning of the academic year to raise their hand if they subscribe to a newspaper or read the news on a daily basis. A handful at most raise their hands. I do find that problematic. It is important to keep abreast of what is happening both nearby and around the world. Admittedly, there is an overkill of news and information, often negatively charged, for example about the war in Ukraine or the violence in Gaza. Unfortunately, such conflicts do not adhere to cucumber time. But this does tend to be a time when the news is slow, and the news items that do get published tend to be more light-hearted.”
This story is part of Recharge's summer series in which readers are given the opportunity to ask scientists a question. The Recharge editors then go and talk with Radboud University scientists to find the answers. This time the question was: what exactly is cucumber time, and what does it mean for the media?