Annual Report 2023
Our journey to a sustainable future
Mediahuis continued to forge ahead in 2023
Image: Fred Debrock
Despite a host of challenges facing our industry, we maintained healthy financial results. We continue to present a strong balance sheet and our current performance means we are prepared for any tougher times that may lie ahead. I am pleased that we can also show clear progress on our sustainability targets. These goals are central to this report.
That means, first and foremost, a commitment to a sustainable framework for high-quality, socially engaged journalism. We want to earn the trust of our readers, and to measure this as objectively as possible in order to enhance it. We have also worked hard on creating a more diverse and inclusive environment, and have put extra effort into developing talent.
Finally, we made our modest but necessary contribution to the energy transition. We did this initially by covering the subject more prominently in our news brands, but also by making targeted efforts within the company. Our CO2 emissions again fell noticeably, even faster than the targets we had set ourselves.
We have helped to shape the transition from print to digital in recent years and are recognised as one of the European leaders in the field. However, the immediate future will be challenging. In 2023, we reached a tipping point: almost 50% of subscribers read our publications digitally, meaning the cost of properly serving our print subscribers will rise disproportionately as a result. We have created a clear strategy in the past year on how best to address this and how to keep our company and its core mission strong.
I have complete confidence in our teams to succeed at this, too. We will undoubtedly continue to develop our activities in related areas, but sound, reliable journalism will remain the essence of Mediahuis – now and in the next ten years.
Thomas Leysen
Chair
Good for the world and good for journalism
For Gert Ysebaert and Caroline Swanenberg, they’re two sides of the same coin
Text: Evert van Dijk | Editor-in-chief Dagblad van het Noorden
Images: Sander Stoepker
Let’s start with 2023. What do you look back on with the most pleasure?
Gert: “We’ve really shaped our strategy for the coming years. We’d already set out the Mediahuis strategy for 2025. And since then, the context has changed. AI has arrived, which means you have to look again at the digital evolution. Then you look further ahead, to 2030. We deliberately chose to involve lots of people from across the group in our strategy exercise. And there was a lot of enthusiasm. We were able to define a clear direction. Now it’s about implementation; 95% of the work is in the execution. Our strategy includes a sustainable model for independent journalism. As a company, we have made the shift and gone truly digital, but most of our revenue still comes from print. The question is, how can we flip that? We’ve summarised the challenge in three simple figures: 7-7-7. In seven years, we will change the ratio of print to digital revenue from 70:30 to 30:70. That gives everyone in the organisation a clear direction.”
Caroline: “My highlight was getting the editors-in-chief of our titles together and discussing the topic that concerns us all: trust. If we are to execute our strategy, we have to not only gain readers’ trust but also trust each other. The fact we could come together like that, for the first time, was a first step in this direction. All the newsrooms were represented.”
That was the sweet, now for the sour. What caused you the most pain last year?
Gert: “There are two things. First, we want to move towards a future-proof organisational structure in the Netherlands, but that’s proving to be more difficult than expected. I’m convinced we need to change, but it’s not always easy to get the organisation to go along with that when things are going well. I understand that. We have to explain even better to our people how we can ensure a sustainable future for our journalism. Second, we’re in a transition phase to a predominantly digital future. We’re gradually saying goodbye to the printed newspaper. While we’re getting there, there are a lot of obstacles, such as the rise in paper prices and problems with distribution. I do have concerns about that.”
Caroline: “What I sometimes have trouble with is the question: how does sustainability tie in with our strategy? To my mind, there’s a direct correlation: that you do good for the world and you stand for independent journalism. We have taken the stance that sustainability is about more than just CO2 emissions, but it still stands alongside the Mediahuis strategy.”
Gert: “The biggest contribution we can make to society is our independent journalism. Making it sustainable, how to approach AI, how to stay relevant and how to keep readers’ trust: it’s all connected.”
Let’s look ahead. What’s in store in 2024?
Gert: “We know very well where we want to go, but now we have to make it happen. This year should prove that our direction is right. After Covid, we didn’t fully succeed in compensating digitally for what we’ve lost in print. That has to happen in 2024.”
Caroline: “What I’m really looking forward to is reaping the benefits of the company-wide roll-out of Degreed, the online training platform. That sets the foundation for an organisation that learns. Rolling out an ICT tool like this is very different from everyone actually using it. We need to work on that. In addition, I’m excited about the initiatives that we’re planning for increasing reader confidence in our journalism. That starts with giving journalists insight into what we actually do. A great development in this regard is that our technology organisation TPS provides insight into the male-female ratio in articles, and now we can measure the toxicity of headlines.”
Gert: “This is how we use AI – which is often seen as a potential threat – as a tool that we can deploy on what matters to us.”
What are the biggest challenges for Mediahuis?
Gert: “Really, we need to convince a large group of people who don’t currently pay for news that they should. We have brands with a great journalistic tradition, and we want to reach everyone from seven to 107 years old. That includes the young people who’ve grown up in the social age. They’ve always known social media, always known the smartphone, they’re not interested in the idea of a newspaper, a static product. How to convince that generation to come to our brands, use our platforms and then get them to pay for it, that’s the big challenge. As a group, we’ve joined forces to explore this. We began with a blank canvas. We’re starting something new, C.Tru, a kind of lab where we’ll explore what it takes to reach young people and get them to pay for our journalism. A team of enthusiastic colleagues are running that in Amsterdam.”
What obstacles do you see?
Gert: “A key question is whether we are fast enough at implementing our strategic decisions. Another bottleneck I can potentially see is that there is too much focus on technology across the organisation. We have to make faster choices with a smaller group of our best people. We are ultimately going to make a difference with our journalism, combined with an excellent user experience. Our journalism can only sell if it reaches readers in a user-friendly way, so they not only come back but also want to keep paying. But we are never going to sell a lot of subscriptions because we have the best app. We do that with our journalism, with our stories.”
Caroline: “We now operate in six countries. We are all different, including the Dutch and Belgians. We may speak the same language, but the culture is different. If we interact with each other even more based on trust, if we give each other something, we can go a long way.”
Gert: “When others look at us, they often ask: how quickly did you do that, form the group and work together so well? But we don’t think it’s moving quickly enough, even though sometimes, when viewed from the outside, things look different.”
The IMPACT programme is built on three pillars. The first is a sustainable model for journalism. This should see the number of subscribers grow to 2 million by 2025 (there are currently 1.8 million for the whole group). How realistic is that target? And why aren’t we at that number now?
Gert: “It is very ambitious, but it’s not impossible. As we go digital, we can reach consumers in many different ways. Some come for a podcast, others for a newsletter about their region or foreign politics, or want to read the digital newspaper in the app. I think it is feasible. But I also like to turn it around: if we care about sustainable journalism, then we have no other choice. Above all, we need to ask ourselves what it takes to get there. Look at the satellite strategy; we want to add new products to existing subscriptions to increase value and service.”
Caroline: “I’m no B2C expert, but I am a great believer in having shared goals. That everyone in our organisation knows they can contribute to this goal and that we collectively celebrate that we’re on the right track. That we have the mindset that we’re going to get there.”
Gert: “Each individual brand is most likely to have a sustainable future in a strong and diverse journalistic environment, with sufficient choice for the consumer. So we benefit from helping each other make progress. By helping each other, you help yourself.”
The second pillar is “unlocking all talent”. That’s about diversity and inclusion. What do we mean by these words? How diverse do we want to be? And when are we inclusive enough?
Caroline: “That’s a great question. I think a lot of people struggle with it. For me, inclusion – connecting people – is more important than diversity. Working with people who are different from you is harder at first, but we know it produces better results. You dare to question, you embrace differences. We ensure that people from different backgrounds and different generations can work together. That provides the basis for becoming a truly diverse company.”
Gert: “I agree with Caroline. First and foremost, it’s important that everyone can be themselves in our company, that there are equal opportunities. If you can do that well, you will become a more diverse company. Diversity is very broad, it’s about gender, origin, age, but also whether someone is introverted or extroverted. It’s definitely a challenge to have good representation in the leadership of the company, especially in terms of gender. I believe very strongly that role models are important. You have to show people with ambition that there is a path for them in this company.”
The third pillar, “green transition”, is about sustainability in the traditional sense, about climate. Where do we stand on that?
Gert: “We are affiliated to the Science Based Targets initiative. We’ve identified what is required to achieve the target of no more than 1.5°C of warming.”
Caroline: “Right now, we understand 99% of our emissions. And we’ve made a plan to bring those emissions down, to halve them by 2030 and move towards zero by 2025 at the latest. This is a very realistic plan, where, unfortunately, we are very much helped by the decline in print circulation. Complete climate-neutrality isn’t possible, by the way. The only way to achieve that is to close the business.”
Finally, what part of the group has not been sufficiently addressed in this conversation?
Gert: “We haven’t talked about Mediahuis Ventures and Mediahuis Marketplaces. Journalism is our mission, and we’ve mapped out the pathway to a sustainable model, but we know it is risky. So it’s important that we diversify sufficiently. We need other income. That’s why we invest in marketplaces. These achieve higher returns than our news brands. Through Mediahuis Ventures, we’re investing in start-ups and scale-ups within the HRtech and Edtech markets. In 2023, we also invested in radio in the Netherlands. That way, we remain a relevant player in the local advertising market. For all our investments, it’s about planting seeds now to harvest in a few years. For that reason, you need enough of them, because you can never be sure what will turn out to be something.”
