A New Leader at a Voice Long Familiar to Listeners

A NEW LEADER AT A VOICE LONG FAMILIAR TO LISTENERS
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Doreen Carvajal]
For generations of listeners, the Voice of America and its crackling international shortwave broadcasts are memories of huddling around radios, listening to accounts of the Allied landing on Normandy or the toppling of the Berlin Wall. Today, the network’s headlines are delivered on mobile phone news alerts, satellite television programs or Internet Webcasts. But the Voice of America, the 64-year-old international broadcasting service of the United States government, is still searching for relevance in an increasingly fierce market as rivals from commercial networks and public broadcasters compete for listeners. Last month, the service — which reaches about 115 million people weekly in 44 languages — received fresh leadership with the appointment of Danforth W. Austin as director, succeeding David S. Jackson, a former Time magazine foreign correspondent. Austin, 60, is, among other things, a former chief executive of Ottaway Newspapers, a community newspaper subsidiary of Dow Jones. He was named to the post by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, a politically appointed group led by Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, a former chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Austin, who has worked outside the United States on short-term reporting assignments but essentially served in corporate posts, said the notion of taking over the Voice of America was “not on my radar screen.” His plans for the network at this early stage are largely vague and general, beyond trying to make sure that it is responsive to its audiences.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/27/business/media/27voice.html
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