NDC Mediagroep
publisher
NDC Mediagroep, previously known as FGDP and later as Mediahuis Noord, was a Dutch publisher of newspapers, magazines, and websites focused on the three northern provinces of the Netherlands: Drenthe, Friesland and Groningen. It was owned by FB Oranjewoud and its final years by Mediahuis, a Belgian company. Headquarters were in Leeuwarden, other offices are in Groningen and Meppel. In addition to three main provinces, NDC published and distributed also in the Kop van Overijssel, Noordoostpolder, and northern Flevoland.
History
1752–1990: Leeuwarder Courant and Friese Pers
The earliest history of the Mediahuis Noord started with the first publication in Leeuwarden of the Leeuwarder Courant by Abraham Ferwerda, on 29 July 1752. After Ferwerda's death, his son-in-law, Doeke Ritske Smeding, took over and led the paper though the French occupation, during which many Dutch papers were shut down by the occupier. Smeding died in 1814; Pieter Koumans Smeding, his cousin, ran the paper until 1854. His heirs owned the newspaper until 1947.
On 1 January 1955 the publishers the Leeuwarder Courant of Leeuwarden the Friese Koerier of Heerenveen, founded as De Koerier on 16 April 1945 as a resistance newspaper, merged to form the Friese Pers. On 1 November 1969, the Friese Koerier was merged into the Leeuwarder Courant.
“NDC Mediagroep” enters the record as publisher. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Mediagroep and publisher can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“NDC Mediagroep” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Mediagroep and publisher provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q599009. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1752, 1990, 1814 and 1854.
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This entry incorporates text from “NDC Mediagroep” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.