Training journalists to innovate – interview with DPG Media’s Director of Campus Gerbert van Loenen

Editor’s note: The Fix is running the “What’s your media job” series where we look at different job positions and career trajectories in and around the news industry. For this edition we spoke with Gerbert van Loenen, Director of Campus at DPG Media. 

Gerbert van Loenen had worked as a journalist and editor for over two decades before taking a career turn to teach others. Today he leads the department responsible for internal training within DPG Media, a company that operates dozens of newsrooms in Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark.

Van Loenen is both a trainer himself and a manager who leads a team of eight people. The Fix spoke with him about how DPG Media conducts internal training for its employees and what topics are most in demand, how he balances his different roles, and what makes for a good trainer. We also looked at Van Loenen’s personal career transition and asked for his advice to younger journalists. 

How DPG Media is approaching training for its journalists

Gerbert van Loenen is in charge of the Training and Innovation Center at DPG Media. Its goal is to “organise trainings to help journalists innovate faster”, Van Loenen says. They offer three types of training activities: in-person sessions for journalists from different newsrooms across the company, bespoke events for one newsroom specifically, and webinars. 

“We speak to editors-in-chief and journalists to hear what they need, what they want to become better at, where they want to innovate. We also speak to the C-level of the company to know where we are moving. And then we try to develop trainings that are helpful to our journalists”, Van Loenen says. Most trainers are internal, including from Van Loenen’s team, but sometimes they invite external speakers.

Out of 2,100 journalists who work for DPG Media, more than half participate in trainings at least once a year, Van Loenen estimates. Generative AI and mobile storytelling are among the most popular topics, along with more bread-and-butter subjects like editing text and crafting headlines. On the day we spoke, a weekday in mid-October, the team held four events: training sessions on using ChatGPT in brainstorming, on storytelling techniques, and on improving text for desk editors, as well as a webinar on reaching Generation Z.

The team behind the work – and what makes for a good trainer

Gerbert van Loenen leads the team of eight people. Alongside him, the team includes several program managers who are responsible for developing training sessions and sometimes act as trainers themselves, an innovation manager whose internal newsletter on the latest media developments is widely read, and a staff member in charge of logistics. 

As DPG Media operates in several countries, six team members are Dutch and two are from Belgium; the job requires a lot of travel between two countries. Van Loenen emphasises that his team sits within DPG Media’s journalistic organisation, and he reports to the Director of Journalism, rather than being a part of the HR function. 

Although organising training is the team’s core activity today, their remit is broader. “We want to be a centre of excellence about innovation”, its leader notes, via other activities like an internal newsletter and collaboration with universities to produce research that could inform newsrooms’ work.

Van Loenen сombines management duties with being a trainer; he spends around one-third of his time developing his own programmes. “The most exciting part [of my job] is being in front of the group when we have an in-person meeting”, he says.

At the same time he is also managing and hiring other trainers. The most important trait he looks for is experience and authority in the field of journalism, but a good trainer should also be a skilled public speaker and have the ability to inspire people. “A trainer must be able to light a fire” of inspiration, Van Loenen believes.

Transitioning from journalist to managerial role

Van Loenen started his career as a journalist covering economic news in Dutch daily newspaper Trouw. After a long stint of various reporting jobs he became the paper’s deputy editor-in-chief but eventually left as a result of a conflict with the new editor-in-chief. 

Quitting after over two decades of working for one paper felt like a big risk, but eventually it created an opening for a new opportunity. Van Loenen worked as a freelance trainer for some time and then came on board as DPG Media’s Director of Campus.

Although his current position is markedly different from his past reporting and editing jobs, Van Loenen believes there are skills he picked up as a reporter that helped set him up for success in the current role.

One common trait is storytelling. “I know we do need KPIs and clear objectives, but it’s not the centre of being a leader. The centre of being a leader is telling a story. Where are we going? Why are we going there? How are we going there? What is the room of manoeuvre? What do I ask from the others to reach the goals? Leading is very much about storytelling, and the same is important in journalism”.

Advice for younger journalists 

For young journalists looking for advice and inspiration, Van Loenen suggests looking further than the Anglo-Saxon world. “I love the UK and the USA, but they [are not that relevant] to many European journalists” because of their different cultural context and language environment.

There’s a lot to learn from Polish, Bulgarian, Italian media

Gerbert van Loenen

“It’s really silly that we’re always looking to The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. There’s so much to learn in continental Europe”.

Van Loenen is especially interested in the Scandinavian news media market because Scandinavian companies work in smaller language environments, and they tend to be very innovative. “I would advise using [your] language skills. If you speak Ukrainian and Polish, for instance, be aware that most people do not understand those languages. Make sure that you look for news and look for media innovations in those countries as well”.

An important part of Van Loenen’s job has been to motivate other journalists. Although news media have had their share of problems in recent years, he says the role of journalism during the crisis gives him hope and helps inspire others.

“When there’s a crisis, people always turn to trusted news brands”, whether during the pandemic or amidst Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “People need trusted news brands, and they know that there’s a difference between what people are saying on social media and trusted media”.

Source of the cover photo: photo by Thomas Geuens, courtesy of Gerbert van Loenen

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