Since the 1990s, Cherno Jobatey has worked as a journalist and TV host for ZDF’s Morgenmagazin and has hosted and produced the UdLDigital talk show, Germany’s most-watched political talk show on the internet.
A native of Berlin, he studied political science at the Free University of Berlin and, as a DAAD scholar, in Los Angeles. Since his student days, he has written for Berlin-based and national newspapers and magazines. He got his start in television through a student job as a photocopying assistant. Cherno Jobatey was also the editor of HuffPost Germany, for which he also wrote. Since 2012, he has taught as a lecturer at various universities, including St. Gallen and the Technical University of Munich.
Cherno Jobatey is an expert on America and hits the nail on the head—both verbally and visually.
Democracy is in show mode thanks to Trump: politics as an entertainment event. Cherno Jobatey speaks about it, and it packs a powerful punch! This does not refer to American gun policy, but to Cherno Jobatey’s inspiring rhetoric, which takes aim at the future of the U.S. with sharp insights and the occasional dig.
Fine social cracks are now running through a society that once stood for the promise of freedom and diversity. Politics there has become a full-contact sport, a campaign contest, and entertainment all at once. No wonder, then, that names like Trump not only make headlines but also shape political cultures—far beyond the country’s borders.
Cherno Jobatey Lecture Topics
What we in Europe can, and must, learn for the future of freedom. Reality instead of romance: What remains of the land of opportunity? For a long time, the U.S. was considered the land of opportunity.
- America First? A Superpower Between Reality and Reality TV
But what remains of that today? And what kind of future will Trump lead us toward? In his cutting-edge keynote, Cherno Jobatey looks deep into the heart of the United States and shows why politics there sometimes resembles a reality TV show more than real, statesmanlike processes. With Jobatey as a captivating speaker, it is not an outside observer speaking, but a true insider of American society.
- Why You Need to Understand the U.S. to Grasp the Future of World Politics
- How Trump & Co. Have Permanently Changed Political Communication
- Why Europe Should Learn from American Innovation and Mistakes
- What Freedom Means Today, and Where Democracy Has Its Limits
- How Media and Power in the U.S. Form a Toxic but Effective Alliance
Inside the USA: Encounters with Clinton, Obama, Biden & Co. Since his studies in Los Angeles and a formative internship at the ARD foreign bureau in Washington, D.C., Jobatey has been drawn back across the Atlantic time and again, including as a journalist. He has met three presidents in person—Clinton, Obama, and Biden, as well as numerous ministers, national security advisors, senators, representatives, governors, and mayors. Cherno Jobatey engages in debate with decision-makers from business, the military, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and the cultural sector, as well as with philanthropists and Henry Kissinger.
Keynote based on firsthand experiences of American society, What Cherno Jobatey brings back from these encounters is more than just an analysis. It is a reality check for the future of the United States. This affects not only people across the pond, ultimately, it also directly impacts us and our democracy in Europe. For the experienced media professional and moderator knows: Developments in America are a mirror of the West in transition.
- How Much Showmanship Can a Nation Take? A Look Behind the Scenes of American Democracy, Power, Media, and Mechanisms
Jobatey’s keynote takes his audience behind the scenes of the American power spectacle, exposing mechanisms and revealing dark depths, but also offering glimmers of hope. For despite all the scandals, backlash, and social media storms: The U.S. remains a central player in the global future, for Europe as well as for democracy worldwide.
What Europe can, and must, learn for the future of freedom. How much spectacle can a state tolerate? How far does freedom extend before it becomes a weapon? And what can Europe learn from the American experience when it comes to social cohesion, innovative strength, and political leadership? With his unmistakable style, direct, witty, and sharp-edged, Cherno Jobatey illuminates in this keynote how the U.S. has become a projection screen for our hopes, fears, and opportunities.
- Geopolitics Today: End of Order, Return of Power?
A young economy minister takes office on an interim basis following the collapse of a coalition. After six weeks, he makes a decision to protect a national technology company. Within days, global powers react, supply chains break down, and entire industries are thrown into turmoil. Not because someone has declared war, but because power, space, and technology are being renegotiated. This is exactly what happened in the Netherlands on June 25. Welcome to geopolitics in the here and now. While geopolitics was long confined to academic backrooms, today it is headline news.
- A realistic picture of the current geopolitical situation
- Analysis of historical patterns and current shifts in power
- Understanding the role of digitalization and AI in geopolitics
- Strategic guidance for decision-making under uncertainty
- Geopolitics is risk management in corporate strategy
- New models of thinking beyond classical geopolitical logic
- Clarity instead of illusions
New uncertainty demands security policy and crisis management. Forget the world as we knew it. The rules-based international order, the security policy that has promised stability since 1945, is crumbling before our eyes. Treaties are losing their significance, multilateral institutions their authority, and values their binding force. The crucial question is no longer whether the world order is changing—but how chaotic this change will be. And above all: What will take its place in these
- Breaking Through Barriers – Relevance, Motivation, Visibility
Walls are there to be broken down, behind them lies your opportunity. Born and raised in what was then West Berlin, Jobatey knows the walls of this world, both literally and figuratively. But he has learned: They can be broken through. One wise sentence at the right time is enough. Behind them lie potential and opportunities that transform dreams into tangible goals, and make it possible to achieve those goals.
- How to recognize and break through mental barriers
- Why true motivation requires impact, not volume
- How to recognize your own potential, embrace diversity and pursue your dreams to achieve your goals
- How much inspiration and motivation can fit into a single sentence
Motivation without Bullshit Bingo – Recognizing Potential. With this talk, Cherno Jobatey creates a motivational hurricane as he whirls energetically across the stage. A performance without Bullshit Bingo, but with real ice-breaker potential. Instead of motivational slogans, there are stories brimming with opportunity. Instead of buzzwords, real life lessons. Phrases that open doors
- Digital power. The new battle for interpretive authority
Knowledge is power. And the attention required to convey knowledge in the first place has always been hard to come by. Attention is a valuable commodity in our knowledge-based society. For whoever holds the attention also holds the power to interpret. A gradual shift began as early as the 1990s with the invention of the web browser: since then, the internet has been available to everyone. The digital revolution continues to shake things up to this day. Traditional business models are changing just as much as communication.
The first major, unmistakable sign of change was that a political nobody from the Midwest wanted to become U.S. president and actually defeated the party elites. Obama’s election made it clear years ago just how much the economy of attention had changed.
At the very latest since the Trump election, it can no longer be denied that the game has changed. With the help of modern technology, in principle anyone can defeat their old-fashioned opponents at relatively low cost. TV journalist and host Cherno Jobatey explains the new rules of the game—and how everyone can learn from them to join in.
- Digital Power. The New Economy of Attention
Those who recognize and follow the principles of the new media economy have enormous advantages—and are not so easily vulnerable. With the help of a digital toolkit, network effects can be leveraged to achieve levels of reach that were unimaginable for a long time. In the past, the goal was to please the mass media in order to gain reach. As a rule, this meant that one had to make a good impression on individual editors. Today, it is crucial to present something, for example, on social media—in such a way that it is recommended to others, usually quite spontaneously. This is how reach can be multiplied.
Disruption in Politics – What was only a topic for political connoisseurs during the 2008 Obama election has been obvious to everyone since the Trump election: the competition for interpretive authority operates under new rules. Trump stands for the disruption of old-school politics. With the help of modern technology, in principle anyone, and at very low cost, can defeat or at least attack their opponents if they rely too heavily on tried-and-true methods. The CDU faltered after the Rezo video shortly before the European elections, and the SPD and FDP also did not perform as well as expected.
Why couldn’t the CDU achieve this with its very European-focused issues? How did the Greens manage to score so highly during the campaign? Was it a stroke of luck or strategic agenda-setting? The same thing can happen to anyone in the public eye. Cherno Jobatey explains how to navigate and respond in this world
Digitalization has changed consumer behavior in almost every area of life. Long-held beliefs no longer apply. And this transformation continues to advance everywhere.
Cherno Jobatey, longtime editor of the HuffPost—which rose to 15th place among news platforms in Germany within three years—explains these new rules of the game. Anyone, whether a DAX-listed CEO, a small business owner, a private individual, or a company executive, can leverage these new opportunities for themselves.
Cherno Jobatey explains this quiet revolution and, using examples from German politics, Brexit, and the “Lady Gaga phenomenon,” illustrates in detail how power dynamics have shifted in the battle for opinion leadership and how one can use this new era to one’s advantage.
“Knowledge is power; that will never change. But never before have so many been so powerful.”
To put it bluntly: If things have gone well so far, it’s been more a matter of luck! Anyone who hasn’t gone digital yet runs the risk of operating nothing more than a folding table in the third row of today’s marketplace, instead of the centrally located, prestigious market stall they’ve been used to. And far too often, people overlook the fact that this brave new world is achievable, easy to use, and affordable to boot!
More about Cherno Jobatey
For a full 20 years, Cherno Jobatey delivered the morning news on the world situation from the small ZDF studio. Now he contributes self-produced segments to the ZDF Morning Magazine. Born in Berlin-Charlottenburg, he grew up in the carefully guarded Berlin of the Wall era. A DAAD scholarship in Los Angeles had a formative influence on him. In sunny California, he not only studied politics and music but also embraced the Californian way of life: work hard, live easy.
Back in Berlin, he found his way into journalism through a series of detours, financed by band gigs and DJ gigs: taz, Tagesspiegel, Zeit, Spiegel, Cosmopolitan, AZ München, Wirtschaftswoche, RIAS Radio.
After years of training as a local reporter and scriptwriter for SFB (RBB), NDR, and WDR, he eventually appeared as a weatherman—on camera! Later, he anchored the regional news. Cherno hosted the nationwide ARD quiz show “Kopfball,” and then came the long-running morning ratings hit “Morgenmagazin.” In between, he made a few forays into entertainment: “Memory,” “Leute Heute,” his own talk show on ORB, and, of course, the ARD classic “Verstehen Sie Spaß?” for five years.
For several years now, Cherno Jobatey has been producing and hosting the most successful online talk show, “UdLDigital Talkshow,” right on Berlin’s prestigious boulevard, Unter den Linden. The concept: Top celebrity guests discuss topics under Jobatey’s guidance in front of a live audience. Jobatey regularly welcomes political heavyweights from the federal government such as Robert Habeck, Christian Lindner, Volker Wissing, and many others, as well as experts, bloggers, and hackers. The talks are streamed and followed closely by followers and the digital press. UDL Digital is a pioneer of today’s entertainment and information programs.
Cherno Jobatey also shares his knowledge at universities. In seminars, lectures, and presentations, he teaches on topics such as political communication in the 21st century, media economics, journalism, rhetoric, and business ethics. From 2013 to 2019, Cherno Jobatey was also the editor of the German edition of the HuffPost.
Despite all these responsibilities, he has always remained true to the stage: Cherno Jobatey appears as a speaker and hosts events, panel discussions, balls, galas, and charity events. And if you’re very lucky, you might even catch him rocking out on stage with his guitar.