Note from the Editor: Mr. Vuijk is the winner of 2022’s Dutch equivalent of the journalism Pulitzer Prize. He is again nominated for this year’s award as well. He writes both this edition’s opening story and the Guest Column.
by Bart Vuijk
A WHILE ago I was invited by the prestigious Flemish-Dutch Association of Investigative Journalists (VVOJ) to Brussels – where their annual meeting took place – to share some tips with young colleagues. I am 58, recently won the Dutch equivalent of a journalism Pulitzer Prize with my coverage of Tata Steel’s heavily polluting plant in IJmuiden, and was considered the perfect candidate for such a lecture.
Unfortunately, from the get-go I had to disappoint my young audience in the room. I am not an investigative journalist at all. I am not even a member of that prestigious association. I am “just” a journalist from a local newspaper.
In fact, I only do journalistic research when I feel it is absolutely necessary. When the molestation of truth is so grotesque that I simply must intervene. As a local journalist, you do that by discovering omitted facts, publishing them, and then letting popular outrage do its work.
At the IJmuider Courant/Noordhollands Dagblad (circulation 167,000) my work comes with an environment where I can sense the opposing strains on a daily basis. I am constantly being watched by employees of the steel plant, who are also my neighbors. Sometimes I receive threats from one or some of them. Then there are the environmentalists (Greenpeace, Extinction Rebellion who only took an interest in the Tata file after four years), increasingly unhealthy local residents, the plant management, spokesmen for agencies such as the provincial government and the environmental services that are supposed to keep a close eye on the goings-on at the factory. And, of course, politicians. From city councilors to the prime minister, whose girlfriend, by the way, worked at the plant. In public relations.
TATA STEEL wasn’t actually my job at all. I was a political reporter for thirty years. Together with my wonderful colleagues in the Dutch city of Almere – such as Marcel Beijer, who contributed here before – I had annoyed many local politicians. Administrators who often failed glaringly, lied like a rug, were sometimes a bit corrupt, and were always angry at the newspaper, as one should be when one loses their well-paid public office. There is quite a bit of dishonesty in politics, and if a journalist catches you on it, you’re in trouble. Then you are put to shame. After all, local journalists do not work for politics, but for their readers. Politicians never understand that.
In 2018, those local politics suddenly stopped being my main job. That was when I was assigned to cover Tata Steel. Until then, there was not much to it, as it was just one of the local industries in the area covered by our paper. Hoogovens, as the once purely Dutch but now Indian company is still affectionately called in the IJmond region, would typically make for boring stories when yet another cabinet minister visited to admire the installation of a new machine. Criticism of the plant was bought off: if you got a cloud of dust over your house or car, they dispatched a cleaner, or you received a free voucher for a car wash. And that was still the approach, Tata Steel thought, even in 2018, when the graphite rains began. A result of a very gross yet subsequently legalized violation of a permit. I soon found that out by requesting and studying the permits.
How did I come up with these graphite rains? I told my audience in Brussels, “I received a call from a concerned reader. Not only was her house covered in black, shiny, sticky dust from the factory, but they were sleeping there with the windows open and it was also landing on their children’s beds. Don’t clean anything up until I’ve arrived, I urged, and I immediately went there to look. To take samples. Pictures of my wipes with black dust that I put in the newspaper. Then I asked the local health department if this stuff could hurt … but they didn’t know. I asked the environmental service if this material was toxic … they didn’t know. I asked the plant … but they were silent, and invited me once again to the opening of something new. Meanwhile, more and more people became increasingly frightened by those daily dust clouds, and more than a hundred complaints came in every day at the enforcement agencies. But nothing happened and people became desperate. And called the newspaper.”
