NV to establish Foreign Media Advisory Council

The New Voice of Ukraine
·3 min read
Логотип NV
Логотип NV

NV announces the creation of an Advisory Council (AC) to help media formulate a long-term strategy and monitor adherence to high journalistic standards.

NV announces the creation of an Advisory Council (AC) to help media formulate a long-term strategy and monitor adherence to high journalistic standards.

The Council will be composed of five foreigners with unquestionable reputation and extensive professional experience in media business, journalism, public service, and diplomatic service. The Council will be independent of NV’s editor-in-chief, NV’s director and the company’s ultimate beneficial owner.

One of the tasks of the Council will be to ensure the editorial independence of NV and to respond effectively to possible controversial or conflict situations both within the company and externally.

The Council will meet at least once a year, and its members will be appointed for a three-year long term. During the meetings, the editor-in-chief of NV will report to the Board on the current and future directions of the company’s development, compliance with professional standards by the NV editorial staff, and the situation with freedom of speech in Ukraine.

“NV strives to use the best international experience,” said Vitaliy Sych, editor-in-chief of NV.

“Creation of such Council will help us ensure the independence of the editorial board in the future and explore new directions of the company’s development, taking into account the experience of more developed markets.”

Financial independence is also an integral part of editorial independence, Sych added, so NV is not only seeking to increase the company’s revenue on existing platforms but also to develop new monetization tools.

One of the Council members, Thomas Bella, was involved in creation of one of the most popular media outlets in Slovakia, which has become a model for many media outlets in Europe seeking to get rid of total dependence on advertising for their revenues. His media outlet already has 80 thousand subscribers in a country of 5 million people. He also helped NV to introduce paywall on the site and develop subscription revenue, said the NV editor-in-chief.

During two years of close cooperation with a dozen editors from Die Zeit, NV learned how his German colleagues work with social media and young audiences in Germany. Another member of the Council, Grzegorz Piechota, helped create one of the most powerful media holdings in Europe, the Polish Agora, which publishes Gazeta Wyborcza. Piechota left the company as vice president of the Agora Foundation before going on to study media innovation as a research associate at Harvard and Oxford Universities.

“People, whom we invited to the Council we have known personally for a long time and who are leading experts in their respective countries,” added editor-in-chief of NV.

“I am sure that their expertise will help us.”

Newly formed NV AC members are:

  • Steven Pifer, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, former Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, now a research associate and program director at the Brookings Institution, USA

  • Leonie Seifert, editor-in-chief of Zeit Online, Germany

  • William B. Taylor Jr., former US Ambassador to Ukraine, Vice President of the United States Institute of Peace, USA

  • Thomas Bella, founder, editor and digital director of Dennik N, Slovakia

  • Grzegorz Piechota, research associate at the International News Media Association, former research associate and researcher of innovations in news media at Harvard and Oxford universities, former editor at Gazeta Wyborcza and vice president of the Agora Foundation, Poland

NV was founded in May 2014 by Vitaliy Sych, former editor-in-chief of Korrespondent magazine. The company’s ultimate beneficiary is Tomáš Fiala, CEO of Dragon Capital, an investment company.

In May, NV celebrates its 10th anniversary. The company now includes the news website NV.ua (11 million visitors per month, GoogleAnalytics data for February), the nationwide talk radio Radio NV (9 million listeners and viewers in February, TNS and YouTube data), a monthly magazine and Dialogues about the Future project.

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Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine