Journalist Jos Heymans (72) passed away after a short illness. This is reported by RTL News, for which he worked for years. First as a political reporter and until recently as a columnist.
Heymans began his broad journalistic career in 1973 at the regional newspaper Het Binnenhof. After that, he was, among other things, foreign coordinator and sports reporter at the GPD, a partnership of regional newspapers. He gained experience with television and political reporting at the TV channel Lokatel in The Hague.
In 1995 he started at RTL Nieuws, which made him a familiar face in the rest of the Netherlands. His colleague Frits Wester explains on the RTL News site how Heymans was the first to report the fall of the Kok II cabinet (2002). “If you asked Jos, why did you actually become a journalist? Then he always said: I can’t do anything else. But what he couldn’t do differently, he did very well.”
Heymans wrote two books: The year of madness, about the rise of Pim Fortuyn in the period 2001-2002, and About the right about the formation in 2010 of the minority cabinet of CDA and VVD. He was also chairman of the Parliamentary Press Association for many years and a board member of the Nieuwspoort press centre.
His former editor-in-chief Harm Taselaar praises Heymans’ journalistic achievements. “Jos certainly belongs in the RTL Nieuws hall of fame. He has more than made his contribution both on TV and online.”
