HILVERSUM Rik Rensen has been appointed editor-in-chief at Radio Netherlands Worldwide as of 1 August 2008. As such he will hold editorial responsibility for editorial teams in all ten languages. He will join deputy editors-in-chief Wim Jansen and Ardi Bouwers to head the Dutch international service. Mr Rensen succeeds Joop Daalmeijer, who left Radio Netherlands to become managing director of the national Dutch public broadcaster NPS in January.
General director Jan Hoek elaborates on the appointment, We were looking for an editor-in-chief with stature, who had more than earned his spurs in both regular and cross-media journalism. Rik Rensen fitted the bill particularly well. Especially as he has international experience as a correspondent in Italy and has worked for foreign media companies.
Rik Rensen, I see the new function as a dream job in a modern media organisation, which is doing particularly well. An organisation that matters and can be proud of itself.
Mr Rensen (52) has worked as editor-in-chief for television; for current affairs programme NOVA (2002-2008) and the commercial news programme RTL Nieuws (1989-1999). He has also held many jobs at commercial broadcasting stations like RTL Nederland as interactive managing director (2000-2002) and at SBS as interim managing director of Cross Media (2006-2008). Before Mr Rensen became editor-in-chief for RTL Nieuws, he worked as a journalist for the daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad and was correspondent in Italy for four years. During this time he was also a correspondent for Radio Netherlands. At present, Mr Rensen supervises research at the Technical University in Delft.