Jan Beijer was the first permanent editor of De Rijnpost: ‘Volkswagen from the company and office behind the party store’

April 12, 2024 at 3:15 am

60-year-old people of the Rhine Post

VEENENDAAL Jan Beijer was the first ‘regular’ editor/reporter of De Rijnpost. He was hired in 1964 and was allowed to work in a small office behind Jan and Corrie van Hardeveld’s business in Zandstraat. The 80-year-old Beijer, who still works in writing, has lived in Tiel for years. At the request of the current editors, he wrote the memoirs of that first period when everything was new and the region was on the eve of important development.

and Jan Beijer

When the Rijnpost went off the presses as a new weekly newspaper in 1964, the publisher Wegeners Couranten Concern began looking for a permanent editor and reporter. “I had finished high school and the army and wanted to go into journalism. My letter of application to Wegener in Apeldoorn was touched immediately. Accepted!”

JUST MAKE A GOOD NEWSPAPER

“I got a white Volkswagen from the company, a small office behind a party shop in Zandstraat in Veenendaal and nothing else. Make a good magazine every week and see how you do, that’s it. No one to show me the ropes. Every Tuesday I dragged myself to the office main in Apeldoorn and produced copy written for the newspaper early in the morning. This was then typed using hand-operated machines which produced lead type. In the afternoon I was in the dressing room to put the pages together. I indicated where the lead elements should be placed. Then a large plate it was made from pages, which had been put on a rotary press. The newspaper can be printed. Until next week.”

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Sitting on an elephant, domninee Arend Vroegindeweij opens the retirement center of De Engelenburgh. – PR

STRONG DISTRIBUTION AREA

“Rijnpost still had a large distribution area in the Gelderse Vallei and Betuwe. In this region I went around looking for news and stories. In a big party tent in Maurik I interviewed the promising singer Corry Konings and his manager Pierre Kartner. In Overberg, a farmer armed with a pitchfork came to me when I asked him about the pig fire on his farm. It went just fine.”

“In Scherpenzeel I wrote a story about the writer Hans Andreus, who turned out to have a dubious war in the past. In Veenendaal I reported on the new De Engelenburgh nursing home, which was opened by Pastor Arend Vroegindeweij. In the mayor’s room, at that time it is still in the old town hall on the Hoofdstraat, I was shouted at by Mayor Jan Hazenberg. I would have thought, I would have increased the Lampegieters’ evening riots and a lot of sensation in the newspaper. He showed me and the photographer Jan Schmetz the door. We felt that he had lived up to his nickname of John War from his point of view.”

BIMBAM

“I have chosen a small journalistic experience that has stayed with me since the early days of the newspaper. During those years I wrote a weekly column under the pseudonym Bimbam. I enjoyed doing it so much that I started doing it again ten years ago. Now I have written 500 in the newspaper Het Kontakt, which is published in Betuwe. A selection of the columns has recently been collected in two booklets. I also look back with pleasure at the success of De Rijnpost. The newspaper experienced very rapid growth, also in terms of size. The established newspapers of De Vallei and Veenendaalsche Courant could no longer face the competition. The advertiser increasingly chose De Rijnpost. That’s how I got credit for my work.”

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Rijnpost reporter Jan Beijer interviews the actor Rien van Nunen (special Stiefbeen) in the building ‘t Trefpunt after the show for the elderly (1966). – Jan Schmetz/Col. Jan. Beijing

PROUD FATHER

“When I hold De Rijnpost from time to time, I feel grateful that I was at the newspaper’s cradle. Like a proud father.”

How did it go? “After De Rijnpost I was a reporter for De Vallei’s daily newspaper and Ede’s Dagblad. In 1968, Wegener’s editorial team asked me to start a new daily newspaper in Tiel as editorial director; Tielse Courant with distribution area from Culemborg to Dodewaard with an office in Tiel. In the early eighties I moved to the municipality of Tiel where I became the first information officer. There I was promoted to Head of the Information Department and later to Director of City Development. I retired in 2006.

After that I was a PvdA municipal councilor in Tiel for eight years. I have been writing a weekly column since 2014.

This article was published in an archive supplement in honor of De Rijnpost’s 60th anniversary. Click here to read the entire anniversary supplement.