INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER

Nowhere in the world are there so many daily newspapers published on such a small piece of land as the Netherlands. Of course, it is one of the most densely populated countries and practically everyone is literate, children start their first reading lessons when they are five. But even apart from these circumstances the viability of such a large number of different daily newspapers is remarkable.

An important reason for this is the multiform of opinions amongst the Dutch population. Nowhere in the world are there on such a small territory so many officially recognized churches and religions (approx. 450). Or for that matter: so many officially registered political parties. The multiform in character of newspapers is linked to that.

The large national daily newspapers especially differ clearly in identity. This even goes up for the large dailies from the same publisher (PCM). Readers tend to choose a newspaper with which they feel "at home" or from which the approach of bringing the news or the commentaries more or less cover what they find important. This means in practice that not many people change from one paper to the other. A publisher will therefor not readily wish to combine two large papers because of, for example, business economical reasons. This inevitably leads to a large loss of readers.

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