Peter Vandermeersch
A SOMBRE if little noticed announcement from Mediahuis Ireland last week contained some rather bleak, if understated, commentary about the future of the European publishing group as well as a new, if somewhat grandiose, role for the chief executive of the Irish branch, Peter Vandermeersch.
There was also a welcome for the new chief exec, Sheena Peirse, who was credited with having “spearheaded” the drive to surpass 100,000 subscribers and shaping the company’s digital strategy.
For Peter there were the obligatory plaudits (he “has had a distinguished career within Mediahuis” etc) and the unusual honour of a title bestowed upon him – Mediahuis Fellow ‘Journalism and Society’. This designation should surely be inscribed in Latin after the departing CEO’s name on his letter heading.
The company statement said that Vandermeersch “will focus on keeping the group’s journalistic mission relevant, acting as a unifying force in an increasingly polarised society”. Good luck with that, Pete.
The Irish branch’s political editor, Fionnán Sheahan, will have noticed the awkward-sounding title conferred on his chief exec with a wry smile. One of Vandermeersch’s first moves at Abbey Street was to change Sheahan’s title from group editor-in-chief to the less-imperial-sounding Ireland editor. This followed Sheahan’s move from the role of Irish Independent editor to the group editorial post in the days before the Belgians moved in to seal the deal back in 2019.
A flattering Business Post headline last week proclaimed: “How Irish Independent owner Mediahuis turned to profit under Peter Vandermeersch”, although the article also listed all the cuts that had enabled this ‘profit’. This helped to explain the real import of the company’s statement, which came at the end when Mediahuis’s main man, Belgian Gert Ysebaert, said that the “leadership transition” was taking place in a period of “profound change”, with independent journalism “under increasing pressure”. This was, he said, because “the economics of journalism and the world around it are fundamentally changing”.
Ysebaert warned of the need to “redefine, defend and articulate” the value of journalism and announced that Vandermeersch’s new role would be to engineer this at the head of a new entity, Mediahuis Fellowship ‘Journalism and Society’.
The real message, however, is that in a period when sales and advertising levels are still in decline, Mediahuis employees in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg and Ireland can look forward to a rough ride in the immediate future.
