Can you write about your own troubles as a newspaper? That will always remain difficult, but the level of communication is usually on the very meager side. At the Brabants Dagblad, part of the Belgian-Dutch company DPG Media, editor-in-chief Carin Smolders resigned with immediate effect last week. A big surprise for the outside world, because she had only been employed since May 2023. It Brabants Dagblad only devoted a three-paragraph message to it.
It stated that Smolders resigned because part of the editorial staff wanted to lose confidence in her through a plenary editorial meeting. Smolders explained in the message that changes were desperately needed for a healthy future for the newspaper. “Unfortunately, I have to conclude that I do not experience sufficient support from the editorial staff to really implement the desired changes.” The message concluded with this statement from the editorial board: “The manners in recent months on the work floor of the Brabants Dagblad are seen as unacceptable by large parts of the editorial staff.”
Such a brief message mainly raises more questions. Why did Smolders experience insufficient support? Because of her own behavior in the workplace or was she ordered by the company’s management to implement a policy that aroused disgust among the editors? Or was both the case?
Anonymous editors reported to Omroep Brabant that Smolders’ management style was “humiliating” and that this created a “culture of fear” in the workplace.
Apparently the media world can also go crazy in Brabant. At least, if the accusations are true.
If all this had happened at another major company, perhaps the editors would have put an investigative team on it. But the editors now prefer to remain silent (or talk anonymously to other media) and the reader is left to guess. Tony van der Meulen, ex-editor-in-chief of the Brabants Dagblad and a newspaper columnist for many years, no. He devoted a column to it, which was published, thank God.
“Not a word about it in our own newspaper,” he wrote following the plenary editorial meeting in question. “It’s easy for me to talk. I haven’t been editor-in-chief for many years. But how would it be to our credit if we not only eagerly aired dirty laundry at other companies, but also generously expressed our own misery. It would shock the reader, but it would increase one’s own credibility. That is the core of journalism.”
He believes that readers have the right to more openness about their newspaper. They need to know which wind is blowing there – whether it is fresh or not. I agree with him in principle, but it will always be difficult to find the right form for it. Extensive reporting during the course of the conflict seems undesirable to me, but careful reconstruction afterwards should be possible.
I was reminded of tumultuous times NRC Handelsblad. For example, anyone who wants to know what happened around the departure of editor-in-chief Birgit Donker and during the reign of Peter Vandermeersch should read the fascinating book Sharpening the mind from 2021 by former deputy editor-in-chief John Kroon. Here the book wins over the newspaper