De som en de delen in journalistieke cultuur. Nationale en stedelijke journalistenkringen in Nederland, 1880-1930

National and Local Professional Associations of Journalists in the Netherlands, 1880-1930In the Netherlands it was only at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth that a true journalistic culture - the art of reporting, the strive for objectivity, exploring social life etc. - started to emerge here and there. Although members of a national professional association, the Nederlandsche Journalistenkring (NJK, founded in 1883) participated in debates where ideas about 'new journalism' were discussed, in the eighteen nineties there was no journalistic tradition worth mentioning, not on a national level. It is true that the NJK was not a local affair, but gross differences existed within the association between the independent press with a growing reporter potential in Amsterdam and the parliamentary press in the Hague who principally focused on relevant to public government values like 'honor and responsibility'. Gradually, the NJK members working in The Hague started to gain more influence. In 1920 the power in the NJK was taken over by Haguean group. The shift completely changed the mentality of the NJK. It used to be a union stressing attitudes and rights of journalists in relation to their profession and the news. Now it had become an organization highly preoccupied with ethics, duties and the rules journalists should abide in their relation to authority and politics.

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