Harry Lockefeer

Lockefeer, Jan Pronk and Jan van der Putten (1975)

Henricus "Harry" Antonius Ludovicus Lockefeer (born October 23, 1938 in Roosendaal , † February 9, 2007 in Bussum ) was a Dutch journalist . From 1982 to 1995 he was editor-in-chief of the daily de Volkskrant .

Life

Lockefeer studied socio-economic policy at the University of Tilburg . In 1965 he became editor at de Volkskrant in the “Economic and Social” department. At this time, under the new editor-in-chief Jan van der Pluijm, the newspaper began to break away from its Catholic origins and develop into a newspaper for the political left, with steady increases in circulation. In 1975 Lockefeer ran as deputy editor-in-chief, but withdrew his candidacy due to the split in the editorial team. When a successor to van der Pluijm was sought in the early 1980s, this time he received broad support. In an unusual procedure in May 1981, as the previous subordinate of the deputy editor-in-chief Jan Blokker, he was given the same status in order to be introduced to the position of the new editor-in-chief during a transitional period. In March 1982 he finally took over from van der Pluijm, but initially relied heavily on Blokker.

The turn away from concern journalism towards the end of the 1970s, combined with a stronger separation of report and opinion as well as a promotion of professionalization, came to an end in his time. The growth continued under Lockefeer, the number of foreign correspondents was increased and the Saturday edition was further expanded. Furthermore, the newspaper was modernized by introducing color printing and switching to EDP. On March 1, 1995, he finally moved to the management team as HR director and handed over his function to his previous deputy, Pieter Broertjes . The circulation should reach 370,000 in May 1996, in Lockefeer's time de Volkskrant had become a quality newspaper with a distribution (in relation to the number of inhabitants) that can only be found in the Scandinavian countries in Europe.

The time on the board of directors was short-lived, however, in 1996 Lockefeer switched to teaching journalism at the University of Groningen , a position he held until March 30, 2006. Since 1997 Lockefeer has also sat on AEGON's board of directors .

Awards

• Dick Scherpenzeel Prijs for reporting on the Third World (1975)

Honors

• Officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau (1995)

Web links

• Obituary on volkskrant.nl from February 10, 2007 (Dutch)
• Portrait on volkskrant.nl (Dutch)