Biography

In 1970, at the age of 19, he went to Northern Ireland to report on The Troubles for, among others, VPRO radio and De Groene Amsterdammer. In Belfast, he rented a room from the local IRA commander on New Lodge Road, an IRA stronghold.

At the end of 1989, Derk Sauer moved to Moscow with his wife, Ellen Verbeek, and their young son at the invitation of VNU to set up a joint venture with the Moscow branch of the Russian Journalists' Union. The goal was to launch the first Russian glossy magazine, Moscow Magazine. According to Sauer, however, his Russian colleagues turned out not to be journalists but KGB agents.

From 1982 to 1989 he was editor-in-chief of Nieuwe Revu.[8] Under his leadership, well-known journalists, columnists, and cartoonists such as Frits Barend, Henk van Dorp, Boudewijn Büch, Henk Spaan, Ischa Meijer, Karel Glastra van Loon, Gerrit de Jager, and Erwin Olaf also joined the magazine.

In the early 1970s he worked with journalist Fons Burger for the VVDM's monthly magazine Twintig.

Starting in 1975 he and Fons Burger wrote as a duo for the weekly magazine Nieuwe Revu.