BBG seeks centralization of news output

The BBG Chairman Walter Isaacson and his executives love centralization and central planning. (They developed a Five-Year Strategic Plan — five-year plans, does that sound familiar?) Never mind that the surrogate broadcasters like Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty were established in West Germany in the 1950s as a counterbalance to the overly-centralized Voice of America (VOA) with its headquarters in New York and later in Washington, DC. BBG executives now want to undermine the independence and specialization of the surrogate broadcasters by merging them into a new large bureaucracy and creating a global news network. Centralization will also harm the Voice of America, which over the years has managed to decentralize its news output and also began to focused on regional and country-specific news reporting.

This email was sent to the VOA Newsroom staff by Sonja Pace:

Jay Tolson, formerly News Director of RFE/RL in Prague has just joined us here in Washington on assignment with the BBG.

David Ensor introduced Jay at our 9:30 editorial meeting and Jay subsequently noted that he’s come in an advisory role to help plan and strategize how the various BBG entities can better share material, work together to produce content and also better distribute that original content. All this goes to plans by the Board to establish a future global news network that in some form includes all BBG entities. David Ensor pointed out he strongly supports that project and looks forward to VOA and Central News being the hub of a future network.

Jay will join us at our 8:45 am editorial meeting in the Newsroom on Thursday. Let’s welcome him.

Thanks
Sonja

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