Oscar Garschagen

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Oscar Garschagen (born November 29, 1952 in Amsterdam ) is a Dutch journalist . From 1998 to 2000 he was editor-in-chief of the weekly political magazine Vrij Nederland and from 2000 to 2003 editor-in-chief of the daily newspaper Algemeen Dagblad .

Life

After completing his military service, Garschagen started his journalistic career at the daily Trouw , where he initially worked in the photo department and became a reporter after a year and a half. In 1977 he moved to de Volkskrant in the same position and in 1981 added to the parliamentary editorial office in The Hague . In 1986 Garschagen became a correspondent in Brussels and in 1993 in Washington . In 1998 he took over the editor-in-chief of Vrij Nederland as the successor to the late Joop van Tijn . The conversion from a newspaper to a magazine had been completely completed by the time he took office, but now the circulation began to drop considerably, which could not be prevented by conceptual innovations. In 2000, Garschagen finally accepted the Algemeen Dagblad's offer to succeed the editor-in-chief Peter van Dijk, who, according to his own admission, was ultimately more comfortable with a daily newspaper. His successor at Vrij Nederland was Xandra Schutte .

At the Algemeen Dagblad , too, there had been significant circulation losses, which Garschagen tried to counter with new categories, more space for news on the front page and a more consistent layout that also extended to the inserts. He was looking for a popular quality newspaper for the whole family, but in the end he shouldn't be in charge of it for long. A first unease arose in the editorial office when Garschagen fired his deputy Anne Branbergen in March 2002. In January 2003, the Algemeen Dagblad was transferred to the new subsidiary Algemene Media Groep (AMG) together with three other regional newspapers from South Holland and advertising papers from the same publisher, the publishing group PCM Uitgevers . Both the editor-in-chief and the director of the Rotterdam Dagblad took over the management of the AMG and gave up their old posts for this, whereby the AMG was led by newspaper people, whose old place of work had a circulation of less than a third of the Algemeen Dagblad on the scales. The editorial team accused Garschagen of not having adequately represented their interests towards PCM; since a corresponding request by the editorial board did not achieve the necessary three-quarters majority, it resigned. With his resignation, Garschagen anticipated an already decided replacement by the PCM Board of Directors.

In September 2003 Garschagen became correspondent in Tel Aviv for the NRC Handelsblad , replacing Salomon Bouman, who had held this position for 36 years. In contrast to his predecessor and the reinforcements sent from time to time, who had mastered at least one of the languages Arabic and Hebrew , he had to learn both languages ​​from scratch for his new job, as he wanted to portray the Middle East conflict from both sides. Garschagen therefore initially relied on English (sometimes French ) in Israel and on interpreters in the occupied territories .

Awards

swell

literature

  • Piet Bouwmeester: De gouden greep van 'Woeste Willem'. De roerige geschiedenis van het zelfstandige Algemeen Dagblad. Adr. Heinen, 's Hertogenbosch 2006. ISBN 90-868-0029-7
    (at Garschagen's time at Algemeen Dagblad )

On-line

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Garschagen, Oscar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch journalist and editor-in-chief
DATE OF BIRTH November 29, 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH Amsterdam