Fons Burger (Zandvoort, 1952) is a journalist, publisher, writer, musician, and entrepreneur. He began his career at the Zandvoortse Koerant, a leftist village newspaper whose presses had been used during the war to print the underground edition of Het Parool. In his hometown he founded, among other initiatives, an action center for the environment, a world shop, and a Sleep Inn.

In 1973 he transformed Twintig, the association paper of the VVDM (Union of Conscripts), into an activist newspaper in the style of a sensational tabloid. Together with Derk Sauer he became, as a citizen journalist, the gadfly of the Dutch armed forces at a time when they were facing increasing social pressure.

In 1975 he joined the Lockheed team at Nieuwe Revu, which published the most important revelations about this major bribery scandal. The team included Wim Klinkenberg, Geert Jan Laan, Rien Robijns, and Willem Oltmans. As an investigative journalist, Burger spent years reporting on the hidden power of wealthy industrial families in the Netherlands and on the scandals surrounding the oil crisis. Another area of specialization was the Third World and war reporting. Through his contacts with resistance movements in Central and South America, he wrote many inside accounts of guerrilla wars.

With the production company Tilt Film, which he co-owned with, among others, Bob Visser, Burger made some thirty documentaries and television programs. These were broadcast by the Vara, VPRO, VOO, and the BBC.

In 1981 he was appointed editor-in-chief of Nieuwe Revu. During his tenure he was dismissed four times for refusing to adapt to the rules of publisher VNU, its advertisers, and its distribution network. He eventually resigned voluntarily to devote himself again to reporting and to his travels in South America. Under his leadership Nieuwe Revu was transformed from a soft-porn magazine into a populist weekly where news, sports, rock and roll, and background reporting became the main sections. In the years that followed, he became increasingly involved in the war in El Salvador. He even raised money to buy weapons for the resistance, which caused a public outcry that reached parliament.

In 1985 Burger changed direction and started a band called No News. With his musical alter ego Alphons Riesthuis, he played in small venues and theater cafés across the country. Later, the band continued as the duo The Fonzes. Burger wrote part of the repertoire himself but also covered songs by Tom Waits, Randy Newman, and Nina Simone.

In 1987 he invested his last savings into starting Rotown, a music café that soon gained international fame as an intimate venue for pop music. A year later he also opened the nightclub Nighttown, one of the first Dutch clubs (alongside the Roxy in Amsterdam) to introduce house music, giving Rotterdam a major urban music stage again after the closure of youth center Arena. Although initially met with widespread protests against the “commercialization of youth work,” Nighttown eventually became a resounding success. As a developer, Burger was subsequently commissioned by the city to set up various cultural projects and became landlord of more than ten Rotterdam art institutions as well as several cafés, restaurants, and venues.

In 1995 he stepped back from these activities to focus on fatherhood. He briefly worked as an actor, playing 34 performances in the musical Klein Duimpje by Chiem van Houweninge and Louis Lemaire.

In 1998 Burger launched Quest Independent, one of the first online platforms devoted to the exchange of ideas, knowledge, and experience in the field of development cooperation. The foundation was linked to a postgraduate program in journalism, of which Burger was director and editor-in-chief. After the internet bubble burst in 2001, Quest Independent had to cease operations.

Together with his partner Jacqui van der Sande, Burger founded Brighter World, a company focused on publishing magazines, websites, and books and on organizing campaigns and events for nonprofits and charities. Their projects included advertising campaigns for sustainable products such as the Oke orange, the populist magazine Strand, which presented complex social issues in accessible language, and the cross-media project Goodies, a magazine, website, and television program (with Antonie Kamerling and Isa Hoes) that promoted sustainability in a hip way.

In 2002 Burger published his debut novel Vrouwen, a satirical self-help book for divorced men and women. A few years later came the thriller Martelaren van Lot, a romance between an elitist photographer and a freedom fighter who becomes involved in terrorism.

In 2008 he and his wife Jacqui published 52 Simple Ways to Change the World. In 2009 and 2010 three more titles in this series followed. Later he published the literary thriller The Tie Wrap Mystery. For young adults he wrote Tpehran, the Secret of the Volcano and Wall of Fame: Quest for her Father, a thriller about corruption in the music industry. These books are now being reissued in English.

In 2010 their sustainable and fair trade gift company GoodToGive grew rapidly, delivering tens of thousands of Christmas gift packages to companies and institutions.

In 2015, after a trip through the earthquake region of Nepal, the couple launched a cashmere brand. In 2018, Sogoodtowear became a not-for-profit cooperative with its own farm and spinning workshop in Nepal and worldwide sales of fashionable cashmere essentials.

Burger later returned to writing as a columnist for joop.nl and as editor-in-chief of the website DifWeb, which focuses on innovative solutions to today’s global challenges.

In 2023 he began a new novel, 2125, The Hybernator, about a man who wakes from a coma in the year 2125. First published in Dutch, the English edition appeared in December 2023. Building on the utopian world envisioned in 2125, Burger is now working on a nonfiction book exploring how, with timely long-term vision, humanity can create a world that endures for centuries to come, in harmony with each other and with our planet.