'Een taaie kongsie uit het Oude Volk.' De families Belinfante en Vas Dias, hun Nederlandsch Correspondentiebureau voor Dagbladen

'A tough partnership from the Ancient People.' The Belinfante and Vas Dias families, their Dutch Correspondence Bureau for Newspapers and other journalistic affairs (1799-1940)

The Sephardic Belinfante family have produced at least two dozen prominent journalists in six or seven generations since around 1800, which is unique in Dutch press history. The majority of these journalists specialized in the specific branch of parliamentary journalism, or at least received thorough training in this field. It was around 1844 that, primarily for their own calculated benefit, the Belinfantes started to cooperate with the Van Dias family of journalists, also of Sephardic descent. In 1869 the two families formalized their cooperation by establishing the Nederlandsch Correspondentiebureau voor Dagbladen (the Dutch Correspondence Bureau for Newspapers). During at least 70 years (from 1830 till 1900) Belinfante & Vas Dias were if not monopolizing the field of Dutch parliamentary journalism than at least leading in it. Increased competition caused their monopoly position to weaken gradually after 1900. They lost many long-time customers, who started to employ their own correspondents in The Hague. Finally, in 1935, they lost the battle against the association of newspaper publishers and its Algemeen Nederlandsch Persbureau (General Dutch Press Agency).