Girish Mahajan (Editor)

De Volkskrant

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Type
  
Daily newspaper

Owner(s)
  
De Persgroep Nederland

Political alignment
  
Centre-left

Format
  
Editor-in-chief
  
Philippe Remarque

De Volkskrant

Founded
  
2 October 1919; 97 years ago (1919-10-02)

de Volkskrant ( [də ˈvɔl(ə)kskrɑnt]; English: the People's Paper) is a Dutch daily morning newspaper. It was founded in 1919 and it currently has a circulation of approximately 250,000 nationwide. Formerly a leading centre-left Catholic broadsheet, de Volkskrant today is a medium-sized centrist compact. Philippe Remarque is the current editor-in-chief.

Contents

History and profile

De Volkskrant was founded in 1919 and has been a daily morning newspaper since 1921. Originally de Volkskrant was a Roman Catholic newspaper closely linked to the Catholic People's Party and the Catholic pillar. The paper temporarily ceased publication in 1941.

On its re-founding in 1945 its office moved from Den Bosch to Amsterdam. It became a left-wing newspaper in the 1960s. Its former clear left wing stance has been watered down since 1980. On 23 August 2006 the Volkskrant published its 25,000th edition.

In 2013 de Volkskrant was awarded the European Newspaper of the Year in the category of nationwide newspapers.

Ownership

De Volkskrant was part of PCM Uitgevers N.V., a publishing company which also owned NRC Handelsblad, Algemeen Dagblad, and Trouw. Until 1 January 2003 the newspaper Het Parool was part of PCM Uitgevers too.

In 2009 PCM Uitgevers was taken over by De Persgroep, a Belgian publishing company.

Free newspaper

In October 2006, Volkskrant announced it intended to start publishing a free version of its paper, targeting youths. Its competitors were to have been Metro and Sp!ts, two other free dailies. However PCM gave no permission for this plan so it had to be retracted. Instead PCM intended to produce a free newspaper together with investor Marcel Boekhoorn, although PCM later withdrew from the project and Boekhoorn started the free daily De Pers using his own resources. A year later PCM started its own free paper DAG, that had a short life and went digital after another year.

Circulation

In 2001 the circulation of De Volkskrant was 335,000 copies. The daily circulation of the paper was 326,000 copies in 2002, dwindling to some 235,000 in 2011, which nevertheless makes it the third biggest newspaper of the Netherlands, after De Telegraaf and Algemeen Dagblad. The total Dutch newspaper circulation in 2002 was 4.9 million (4.2m paid and 0.7m free). The paper has since then heavily lost circulation. The circulation drop occurred under the editorship of Pieter Broertjes, who gave up his 20-year tenure in 2010.

Typeface

The typeface Capitolium News by Gerard Unger (2006) has been the main type used in de Volkskrant since 2 December 2006.

References

De Volkskrant Wikipedia