“Media policy must also be tech policy”

The second panel of the NDP debate (read part 1 here) shifted the lens. Less AI, less infrastructure, more “what does journalism still mean to people, especially if they no longer open a newspaper?”

The question posed by moderator Monique van Dusseldorp was almost physically tangible: “How are we going to get journalism back to the people? How do we ensure a lively news landscape? Because we all think that's so important for our democracy, don't we?”

What followed was a conversation at once gloomy and hopeful. Gloomy because young people (up to the age of 40) are dropping out. Hopeful because there are still people trying to fill that gap – street by street, if necessary.

Young people live in the news, but not with news brands

Media researcher Karin Schut kicked off with figures that no one can ignore. “Eighty percent of young people get their information from social media,” she said. TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit-style formats: that's where young people form their views of the world, from Gaza to elections. Traditional news brands – newspapers, websites, talk shows – are hardly visible there.

And that's not just because of young people. “News brands are present on those platforms, but often not with content created for young people, at their pace, in their language,” Schut said. The result: if you remove NOS Stories from the feed, “it turns out that a large proportion of young people no longer see any news from quality news brands at all.”

And that problem is not limited to teenagers. Schut pointed to something that often remains invisible in reach figures: “The middle generations, people between 30 and 50, are also dropping out. Today's 40-year-olds consume less news than they did when they were 30.” That is crucial, because this is traditionally the group that pays for journalism. “The paying news user group is shrinking. Meanwhile, older generations are actually carrying the financial burden.”

Her concern is therefore twofold: reach and model. How do you create news that people are still willing to pay for when they mainly see news in bite-sized clips and snippets, sometimes without a source? “We need to think not only about how we bring brands back into the spotlight,” she said, “but also: what type of product do we put quality journalism into so that people are willing to pay for it?”

Public vs. private or working together?

Where Schut outlined the problem, Mohammed Mohandis (GroenLinks-PvdA candidate) immediately jumped to system change. His argument: current media policy no longer fits with how people consume media. “My children don't understand what channels are, what networks are,” he said. “My youngest calls the television ‘that big iPad on the wall.’” The current media law was built for linear TV and for a world in which public broadcasting and regional newspapers are neatly separated domains. But that's not how young people experience news anymore.

According to Mohandis, it is time to end the “rearguard battles” between public and private media. He called for a complete overhaul of media law and closer cooperation between regional broadcasters and newspapers. Not because they should suddenly become one company, but because the public does not see the distinction anyway. “We must enable regional newspapers and regional broadcasters to develop new revenue models to make news easily accessible to young people. Young people should be able to access reliable news quickly, without having to click through fifteen links.”

He acknowledged that paywalls make sense for revenue, but warned that they effectively exclude young people. “You want young people to get reliable news alongside all those videos and snippets. And that's not a given right now.” That's why, he said, something has to happen politically that was unthinkable ten years ago. “I'm done with this battle between private and public media in the Netherlands, while we're being eaten up by big players from outside. If you don't see that and don't want to change it, you'll keep fighting a rearguard action.”

Journalism is also a security issue

There was no opposition to this view from the VVD. On the contrary, Martijn Buijsse framed it in terms of democratic resilience and strategic autonomy. “Dutch news companies are important for two things: pluralism in the range of news on offer and digital autonomy. For a long time, we were able to live with our dependence on American platforms, but we have reached a tipping point. We want less and less of that.”

And then comes the question that is often asked of the VVD: should the government actively support private media? Buijsse did not immediately put money on the table, but he did not shy away from responsibility either. “I see a lot of innovation in Dutch media companies,” he said. "I would like to encourage the development of new revenue models. The chain of news provision to citizens is changing now. We must embrace that."

According to Buijsse, this is not only about innovation in editorial offices, but also about the digital infrastructure on which those editorial offices will soon be running. “We have to go along with that movement. Not just to support one media company, but to protect the entire digital infrastructure. Otherwise, we will soon be in American hands.”

Buijsse made it personal. “When I was eleven, there was a huge newspaper on the kitchen table every day. That directly contributed to my becoming a member of parliament. My daughter doesn't read the newspaper. And that does worry me. If young people no longer have access to news as a matter of course, it will affect democracy.”

Journalism back in the neighborhood

If the broad outlines of autonomy and infrastructure sound abstract, Ron Meyer (Heerlen-Noord) brought it down to street level. The result: “the neighbor's newspaper,” an initiative he set up together with the daily newspaper De Limburger. “We are giving away three thousand free subscriptions,” said Meyer. “Not only to children in the upper grades of primary school and the first years of secondary school, but also to their parents. At school, digitally in class, sometimes on paper at home. News as something that belongs to you, not something that belongs to ‘people far away’.”

The goal is not just to ‘give someone a newspaper’. The goal is engagement. “Children no longer know what news is and what to do with it,” added Monique Parren (De Limburger). That's why they teach media literacy in the classroom, create school newspapers about their neighborhood together, and let children publish their own stories. These can be about something small and concrete (“I fell off my fat bike and I want to warn others”) or something big (“What's happening in our neighborhood and why doesn't anyone consult us?”).

© Butino

According to Meyer, it works both ways. It's not just about educating children to become citizens, but also about reconnecting journalists with neighborhoods they no longer visit. “Journalists are rediscovering stories they had lost touch with,” he said. “That's not just charity. That's restoring democracy.”

An important lesson: even free news doesn't just happen. “You might think: free subscription, everyone wants that right away. That's not the case. If you've never had it, it's worthless. You literally have to learn to see the value of reliable information together.”

Winning back the youth

Philippe Remarque (DPG Media) showed how a national publisher is experimenting with this itself. DPG recently began offering free digital access to all its titles to students in the Netherlands, from vocational schools to universities. “That resulted in thousands of registrations per hour,” he said. It is both a gesture (“students weren't paying anyway or were reading via their parents”) and an investment in relevance.

But he warned: you can't just give young people access, you also have to serve them seriously. “We have a way of storytelling that doesn't always match how young people consume things. Editorial teams need to become more personal, more transparent, and seek more interaction. If people don't understand how a story comes about, if they just navigate by faces in their timeline, then we remain inaccessible.”

Remarque also mentioned the unsustainability of dependence on platforms. Publishers are present en masse on TikTok and Instagram because that's where the audience is, but, he says, "You are totally dependent on it. One change in platform policy and you're gone.“ He gave a recent example: European rules on political advertising have led some platforms to simply block certain political and journalistic content—including serious titles and voting aids. ”Then you see how dependent you suddenly are on their political decisions,“ he said. ”We are also simply being used to put pressure on Brussels."

That's why DPG is looking at something else: its own distribution channels, but social ones. He mentioned nu.nl, which is experimenting with its own social feed on its own site, via open protocols (Bluesky/Mastodon federation). The idea: a federal network where editors post, which NOS or De Telegraaf can also connect to, where moderation can be arranged jointly, and where no Elon Musk can pull the plug. “It's still early days,” Remarque acknowledged. “But this is a way to build a social ecosystem without outsourcing our democratic infrastructure.”

His closing message was almost classic journalism, and at the same time, very 2025: quality as a weapon. “There is a lot of trash on the internet,” he said. "And there is more and more synthetic reporting. People will continue to need journalism from real people, which has been researched and for which someone takes responsibility. That is where Dutch news companies can distinguish themselves. Quality is value. “

”Media policy is tech policy"

At the end, the question arose: what should politicians do about this in concrete terms?

There was remarkably little disagreement among the politicians. Mohandis wants to get rid of the wall between public and private, and wants a minister who integrally manages the entire playing field – journalism, digital infrastructure, platforms. Buijsse wants digital autonomy and says outright that the loss of journalistic access for young people is a democratic risk. Both say: the state does not have to write the newspaper, but it must ensure that Dutch news provision does not leak into American ecosystems, where we no longer have any say.

And then there was perhaps the key sentence of the entire afternoon. NDP director Herman Wolswinkel concluded with an observation that ties everything together: “Media policy must also be tech policy.” Journalism is no longer just about editorial offices, but about infrastructure, data dependency, platform power, and digital autonomy. If the Netherlands were to treat this as a single issue rather than across three ministries, there would still be something to save.

Because, as Remarque concluded, “People still want real journalism. But then we still have to be there to make it.”