André Spoor

André Spoor (born June 22, 1931 in The Hague ; † September 18, 2012 there ) was a Dutch journalist . He was editor-in-chief of the daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad from 1970 to 1983 and from 1986 to 1988 editor-in-chief of the weekly political magazine Elsevier .

Life

Spoor was born to Simon Hendrik Spoor , a soldier. He was later in command of the colonial army in the Dutch East Indies from 1946 to 1949 , but fell ill on the day of his appointment as general and died two days later. His son took up a degree in theology, but then decided to study journalism and became an editor at Amsterdam's Algemeen Handelsblad . He worked there in the foreign editorial department and was a correspondent in Bonn , Washington and New York . In 1968 Spoor became the deputy editor-in-chief. After the merger of the newspaper with the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant to form the NRC Handelsblad , he was part of the editor-in-chief together with Jérôme Heldring and Henk Hofland , since his two colleagues left this in the course of 1972, and in the end he was left alone. Despite a slight drop in circulation during the first five years since the merger, there was then a considerable upswing under his leadership. When he left the paper in 1983, his successor Wout Woltz was able to build on his success; today NRC Handelsblad is the most renowned national daily newspaper in the Netherlands.

In 1986, Spoor became the new editor-in-chief at Elsevier , the country's largest weekly political magazine. He turned it inside out by renewing the editorial team, a new layout and a larger cultural section and gave it its current name (until then "Elseviers Magazine"). A bypass operation and a decrease in circulation, however, put an end to this function after just two years. Spoor then returned to the daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad as a correspondent in Vienna .

Works

• Sissi en other called, report uit het proefstation voor de ondergang van de wereld , Balans, Amsterdam 1993

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Biography André Spoor ( Memento of the original from February 24, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , VPRO (Dutch)  
2. ↑ Oud-NRC-man Spoor overleden , report from the NOS (Dutch)

Web links

• Radio interview with André Spoor about his life (Dutch), RealAudio - Stream
• Conversation with André Spoor on nrc.nl about the 1970 merger (Dutch)