By Stefan J. Bos, Worthy News Europe Bureau Chief
AMSTELVEEN/BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – Derk Sauer, the Dutch media entrepreneur who founded one of Russia’s few independent newspapers, The Moscow Times, died on Thursday at age 72, following an accident, his family confirmed in a statement.
Sauer was seriously injured last month in Greece in a crash with his sailing boat. Dutch sources said he and his wife, Ellen, were on their vessel when it unexpectedly hit a rock.
He reportedly fell and sustained severe injuries. The journalist was subsequently treated in hospitals in Athens and Amsterdam, but “without success”, reported Amsterdam newspaper Het Parool.
Born in Amsterdam, Sauer spent his youth as a leftist activist before becoming a journalist for Dutch newspapers and broadcasters. “I still recall him entering our newsroom in Amstelveen, a suburb of Amsterdam where he lived,” said Johan Th. Bos, a Worthy News correspondent in the Netherlands, was a long-time editor of the Amstelveens Weekblad (Amstelveen Weekly) newspaper.
“Sauer was a young student at the time who organized a rally against the Amstelveen municipal council’s move to distance itself from the ideology of the then Soviet Union with the words: “Stalinism no, Communism yes.” I told him, to his great surprise, that the conservative liberal VVD party, which effectively ruled Amstelveen, would never agree with “Communism, yes.” But he later changed and became a real journalist and fighter for press freedom,” Bos said.
Sauer began his journalistic career as a reporter for various magazines, including as reporter and later chief editor of tabloid weekly Nieuwe Revu, which loosely translates as both “New Review” and “New Show.” “He had a passion for social issues,” recalled Worthy News Chief International Correspondent Stefan J. Bos. “He called me in the 1980s to do a cover story for Nieuwe Revu on Youth and Suicide after I covered that topic in my magazine Jong Amsterdam (Young Amsterdam), Bos recalled. “Together with fellow editor Wim H. Kok, we wrote an extensive investigative story as teenagers for Nieuwe Revu on a previously taboo topic in the Netherlands.”
In 1989, Sauer moved to Russia, where he founded Independent Media, a publishing house that launched, among others, the independent daily newspaper The Moscow Times.
MOSCOW TIMES
Since its launch in 1992, The Moscow Times has become an English-language daily aimed at the growing expat community in post-Soviet Russia. Under his leadership, the paper became a trusted independent source of news for millions of readers inside and outside the country and helped launch the careers of dozens of prominent journalists.
The same year, Sauer and his business partner Annemarie van Gaal founded Independent Media, which went on to publish the Russian editions of Cosmopolitan, Playboy, FHM, Harper’s Bazaar, Good Housekeeping, Esquire, and Men’s Health.
In 1999, Sauer co-founded Vedomosti, one of the country’s leading business newspapers. He would also serve as director of RBC, another leading business publication.
In addition, Sauer remained active in Dutch media. From 2010 to 2015, he served as chairman of the supervisory board of the Dutch paper of record NRC and was chairman of the documentary festival IDFA for ten years. He also wrote a column for Het Parool for over thirty years.
After selling The Moscow Times in 2005, he repurchased the publication in 2017 and relaunched it as a digital-only outlet. The newsroom continued operating from Moscow until March 2022, when Russia’s wartime censorship laws forced Sauer and the staff to relocate to Amsterdam.
With Sauer’s support, the independent broadcaster TV Rain (Dozhd) and journalists from the exiled Russian news outlet Meduza also relocated to Amsterdam, helping establish a hub for independent Russian media in exile.
Yet Sauer did not forget those who stayed behind. He appeared in tears on Dutch television last year when learning of the death of opposition activist and political prisoner Alexei Navalny in a Russian jail.
EXTRAORDINARY FATHER
His son Pjotr, a journalist for The Guardian newspaper, said that words could not express “what an extraordinary father and husband he was”.
“He devoted his life to defending independent Russian media, and at the end of his life, he asked that we continue to support the free press.”
Sauer was an “adventurer in heart and soul”, the Parool said in its obituary. “But he was always a journalist, with a sharp eye for injustice.”
The NRC described him as an entrepreneur, a publisher, and an activist. “In his youth, he was a convinced Marxist. In Moscow, he organised trade fairs for millionaires,” he paper said. “Derk Sauer fought to the end for a free press in Russia.”
He is survived by his wife and their three sons.
Funeral arrangements were not immediately announced.
Copyright 1999-2025 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
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