De Volkskrant was founded in 1919 and has been a daily morning newspaper since 1921. Originally de Volkskrant was a Roman Catholic newspaper closely linked to the Catholic People's Party and the Catholic pillar. The paper temporarily ceased publication in 1941. On its re-founding in 1945, its office moved from Den Bosch to Amsterdam. It became a left-wing newspaper in the 1960s, but began softening its stance in 1980. On 23 August 2006 the Volkskrant published its 25,000th edition. In 2010, Pieter Broertjes completed his 20-year tenure as editor-in-chief. In 2013de Volkskrant was awarded the European Newspaper of the Year in the category of nationwide newspapers.
Ownership
De Volkskrant was part of PCM Uitgevers N.V., a publishing company which also owned NRC Handelsblad, Algemeen Dagblad, and Trouw. Until 1 January 2003 the newspaper Het Parool was part of PCM Uitgevers too. In 2009 PCM Uitgevers was taken over by DPG Media, a Belgian publishing company.
Free newspaper
In October 2006, Volkskrant announced it intended to start publishing a free version of its paper, targeting young people. Its competitors were to have been Metro and Sp!ts, two other free dailies. However PCM gave no permission for this plan so it had to be retracted. Instead PCM intended to produce a free newspaper together with investor Marcel Boekhoorn, although PCM later withdrew from the project and Boekhoorn started the free dailyDe Pers using his own resources. A year later PCM started its own free paper DAG, that had a short life and went digital after another year.
Circulation
In 2001 the circulation of De Volkskrant was 335,000 copies. The daily circulation of the paper was 326,000 copies in 2002, dwindling to some 235,000 in 2011, which nevertheless makes it the Netherlands' third-biggest newspaper, after De Telegraaf and Algemeen Dagblad. The paper has since then heavily lost circulation.
In January-May 2020 the website volkskrant.nl was one of the most popular and reliable sources in Dutch Wikipedia. According to Alexa, the website volkskrant.nl is the 116th most popular website in Netherlands.
