Arjan Paans, now chief editor of Metro, will be joining E52 on 1 May. For the Eindhoven journalistic platform, he will – for the time being on a part-time basis – lead the editorial and business process of internationalisation. The first step is the construction and operation of a platform in Munich. E52 wants to announce the details of this, including a new name, before the summer.
Paans is currently employed by Telegraaf Media Groep, where as chief editor he supervised the transformation of the free daily Metro into a cross-media brand. Previously, he was chief editor of the regional newspapers of the same publishing company. From 2003 to 2008, Paans worked as a correspondent in Germany for, among others, the AD, Elsevier, and the Financieele Dagblad.
Paans: “After years of working for big publishing houses, I look forward to linking up with an ambitious journalisstartupt up like E52. At E52 I can combine my experience as a correspondent and as a manager.”
E52, founded by Merien ten Houten and Bart Brouwers, focuses, in Dutch and English, on the world of innovation. With a website, newsletters, events, books, newspapers and a whatsapp service, independent reports are made about people, organisations and developments that provide insight into the innovative changes in society. Because of the strong emphasis on this theme, E52 started in Eindhoven, but the platform is currently also developing into other areas. Munich will be the first major hub abroad, with articles in German and English. The intention is to add other innovative regions, if Munich has proven to be successful.
Together with the founders, Frans van Beveren currently manages E52 on a daily basis. He is also responsible for the technical conversion of E52 to the European platform. “A very exciting operation, both journalistic and professional. We have now shown that at the regional level we are able to discover the important innovations and to capture them in journalism. We all have the feeling that we can do the same in other innovative regions of Europe. The fact that Arjan Paans is going to help us with this is great news.”
E52 also wants to start a European platform, on which a cross-regional selection of the Munich and Eindhoven articles will be published, along with items made especially for this platform. Van Beveren: “This will enable us to fulfil our mission even better: to tell the story of innovation in such a way that our public can face the future in a better informed way”.
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