Although many of the bigger newspapers and broadcasting corporations have been online for quite some time in the Netherlands, they have only been making serious efforts in the last couple of years. The new kid on the block proved to be the most successful: Nu.nl, founded in 1999, originally was a very straightforward service, providing articles by the bigger news agencies. It was an instant hit, which gave them a headstart that still makes them the market leader.

That fact doesn't mean they refrain from renewing: with www.nujij.nl they went into social bookmarking, giving readers the opportunity to decide for themselves what is important and what is not. A newer initiative is GeenStijl, which focuses on news and rumours usually covered by tabloid newspapers. It is provoking, sometimes scandalous, not checking any facts and very popular with readers.

Newspapers

More traditional media, especially newspapers, are still trying to catch up. They have the advantage that most people already know their brand name, especially of course the subscribers of the paper edition (ninety percent of the newspaper market in the Netherlands is subscription-only, in most other countries it is the reverse). But these papers also have an old-fashioned image, which was confirmed by the way they joined the internet: hesitantly, slowly adjusting to the rules of the new game.

They initially tried to stay as close to the look-and-feel of the newspapers, especially for instance the biggest daily, Telegraaf. That company (that acquired previously mentioned GeenStijl) is slowly steering away from the paper edition. Same goes for Algemeen Dagblad, which has been online in a serious way only for two years and is thus growing fast.

NRC, and it's younger sister NRCnext (for the young urban generation), has shown more courage. They have adopted blogs for instance, although not to the extent that people are posting there several times a day. NRCnext even introduced two styles for the site: one focsed at news (until 4PM), one focused at leisure (after 4PM).

Last but not least, de Volkskrant is investing a lot in vodeo and graphics. Furthermore, they created the Volkskrantblog, for and by readers, although some editors contribute to it as well. None of the Dutch newspapers had the courage (and money probably) though to combine all these features (blogging, social bookmarking, video) together into one site. By the way: not all of them feature the possibility for readers to comment on stories.

More commercial

The newspaper companies were much quicker with defending their commercial interests. Telegraaf was jumping immediatey on the car ads market, Volkskrant made an own portal for job ads. That company also made portals for travelling and for mental health, just to name a few.

The publisher of regional newspapers Wegener, recently acquired by Mecom, is active on the car ads market as well. Part of the ads market went to new internet companies though, like eBay and Marktplaats (market place).

Broadcast media

Government-funded broadcast media even had a more difficult time jumping on the train. The excellent 3voor12-initiative, which features loads of indie music, started more than five years ago and is an exception. The content is partly produced by volunteers, but overall the quality is high and content and presentation are cutting-edge.

In the last two or three years Uitzendinggemist (missed broadcast) took off big time. People can now see the episodes of soap operas, news broadcasts etc. etc. online whenever they want. Typically though for the defensive mentality: not all the networks give admission to put all their programs online.

Uitzendinggemist is from the public networks. The commercial networks feature a varying degree of web activity.

(written by Bas Timmers - internet editor for de Volkskrant)