Former NRC journalist Marc Chavannes passed away

Political commentator, journalist and former correspondent Marc Chavannes (1946) died on Wednesday. His family announced this.

Chavannes wrote for years NRC, where between 1973 and 2015 he was successively chief of Saturday's Bijzondersel, political editor, London correspondent, deputy editor-in-chief, correspondent in Paris and Washington, and columnist. He was known, among other things, for his sharp, yet thoughtful and humorous analyses.

He has been writing since 2015 The Correspondent, where he also managed to inspire a generation of young journalists. Chavannes was professor of journalism at the University of Groningen between 2006 and 2012.

With his work he won the Prize for Daily Journalism (now De Tegel) and twice the Anne Vondeling Prize for clear political journalism. The last time, in 2021, the jury wrote: “What Herman Tjeenk Willink is for public administration, Marc Chavannes is for political journalism.”

The first time, in 2004, Chavannes received the Foundling Prize for his coverage of the US presidential elections. A country, he wrote, where “9/11 never ends, the flag flew in every speech.” Those days after the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, he would hardly sleep and report constantly. He felt a contrast with the Netherlands, he said in his speech at the awards ceremony, where the purchasing power pictures ruled.

Also read
interview with Chavannes from 2021

'No one rules'

In his Opklaringen column, which he wrote for NRC for ten years after returning from abroad, he regarded the Netherlands 'as a correspondent' and sought an answer to the mechanisms behind those pictures and government policy. He saw a country in which no one took responsibility or credit. It led, among other things, to his book No one rules (2009).

Opklaringen was the follow-up to his reporters' column Chronicle, for which he also looked for what policy did for 'ordinary' people in the 1990s. In his first episode, for example, he hung out with garbage collectors in the Bijlmer.

Chavannes also led the way in reader interaction. During his time in the US, he had seen American blogs asking readers for suggestions. He also introduced this in the Netherlands.

Also read
his last column

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