Sauer began his journalistic career at
De Tribune—the party newspaper of what was then KEN (ml), now the
Socialist Party (SP), when Koos van Zomeren was editor-in-chief there. In the early 1970s, he worked with journalist Fons Burger for the VVDM’s monthly magazine
Twintig. Starting in 1975, Sauer and Burger wrote as a duo for the weekly magazine
Nieuwe Revu. Together with Adriaan Monshouwer, they also founded "Tilt Film" and, along with Bob Visser, created the VPRO TV program
NEON. For
BBC Panorama, they traveled from
Hanoi to
Saigon, filmed in
Kurdistan and with the
Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and produced the documentary
Een Koninkrijk voor een Huis ("A Kingdom for a House") about the squatters' riots during the inauguration of
Queen Beatrix. From 1982 to 1989, Sauer was editor-in-chief of
Nieuwe Revu. 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 Russia 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. That same year, they launched the English-language daily
The Moscow Times. Initially, the paper was distributed for free, but when it switched to paid subscriptions, Sauer and Van Gaal continued to incur losses despite its popularity. Russian editions of
Playboy,
FHM, ''
Harper's Bazaar, Good Housekeeping, Esquire, and Men's Health'' followed, turning Independent Media into an international multimedia company and eventually a market leader in Russia. In 1999, Sauer launched the business newspaper
Vedomosti in a joint venture with the
Financial Times and
The Wall Street Journal. In April 2005, Sauer founded the publishing house Nieuw Amsterdam. In 2014, he sold his 50 percent stake to the Novamedia Group. In January 2010, Sauer, along with the investment company Egeria, acquired the newspapers
NRC Handelsblad and
nrc.next from PCM Publishers. Due to Sauer’s influence on the editorial direction, Birgit Donker resigned as editor-in-chief of
NRC Handelsblad as of 1 July 2010. Sauer believed that newspapers no longer played a role in reporting breaking news—since other media were faster—but should instead focus more on providing background and analysis. After
RBK published reports in 2016 on the "
Panama Papers" and
Vladimir Putin's involvement, masked agents raided Prokhorov’s offices and seized stacks of documents. Several Russian media outlets reported that Sauer was under investigation for fraud, allegedly related to a 2014 share transaction. Sauer dismissed the accusations as "nonsense," suggesting the Russian authorities were likely unhappy with his media companies’ reporting: "The moment they find a company or person bothersome, they dig up some case. This is how thousands of entrepreneurs have ended up in jail." In 2017, Sauer bought back
The Moscow Times. At that point, he immediately transitioned the publication to a fully digital format. He did not expect to make money from the project and saw it primarily as a contribution to press freedom in Russia. In March 2022, a few weeks after the
Russian invasion of Ukraine began, Sauer and colleagues relocated to
Amsterdam.
The Moscow Times was hosted by
DPG Media. Soon after, the independent TV station
TVRain (Dozhd) and journalists from the online channel
Meduza joined them, turning Amsterdam into a safe haven for independent Russian journalism. In January 2025, Sauer launched a music label together with Russian music journalist
Artemy Troitsky and colleague Jennifer Duin, aimed at supporting bands and artists who are no longer allowed to perform in their home country. == Political views ==