What is going on between the university and ScienceGuide (SG), the online medium that publishes news articles and background stories about higher education in the Netherlands? In July, SG editor-in-chief Frans van Heest wrote about a labour dispute between UM and a professor from the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences. The latter was suspended and took the matter to court. Van Heest based himself on the published court decision which is open to the public, and led with the heading: “Sueing Maastricht University professor does not want a ‘position elsewhere’.”
The day after the publication, SG received an e-mail from one of the Maastricht University press officers, saying that some things were incorrect. “If we didn’t adapt it, we were threatened that legal steps would be taken.” And that did not go down well with Van Heest. “They could also have picked up the telephone; then we could have solved this amicably. Why use harsh legal threats?” About this, Koen Augustijn, spokesperson on behalf of the Maastricht Executive Board says: “We felt that we had to react firmly. Something had to be put right here quickly. The incorrect position taken in the article was unnecessarily damaging to one of our employees. Anyway, in answer to the question whether threatening with legal steps was necessary, one could say: ‘Perhaps that could also have been done differently’.”
Stupidities
Eventually, SG made a few adaptations, “we mainly made the intro more explicit. The suspended professor had actually unjustly accused another professor of unacceptable sexual behaviour, and that had to be made clearer.”
Nevertheless, this didn’t clear the air, the editor-in-chief states. A number of weeks later, in August, there was a discussion between SG and UM about an ‘unduly claimed payment’ of 50 thousand euro. UM, as a ‘partner’ of the news medium (along with three other universities, eight universities of applied sciences and three other organisations), paid an annual amount for the ‘collaboration’ with SG, but the collaboration agreement appeared to have ended in 2021. According to Van Heest, however, that was “not formally” arranged. The UM had just paid the invoices after 2021. Due to “stupidities”, Augustijn now says.
Financial dispute
It came to light last spring due to an alert UM employee. After receiving a new invoice from SG, the editorial board was contacted about the ending of the collaboration in 2021. “We were no longer a partner, so we were not going to pay the invoice,” says Augustijn. “The e-mail exchange about this was before the publication of the article about the court case, so before we asked for textual adaptations.” UM is therefore of the opinion that “the journalistic dispute” is not related to the “financial dispute”.
Van Heest sees that differently. According to him, one plus one is two. “Moreover, UM has always behaved like a partner the past few years,” he says. “We have had plenty of contact about various topics, we visited the UM for talks, to discuss subjects. We spent a lot of attention on Maastricht.” Augustijn contradicts the fact that the university behaved still as a partner: “We treated ScienceGuide just like other media, such as de Limburger and Observant, we send press releases and highlight all kinds of activities.”
SG has now submitted a counterclaim to the university for the past year. Van Heest: “If Rianne Letschert sticks to her guns and wants the 50 thousand euro returned, that will be the end of SG.”