Philip S. Balboni
| Philip S. Balboni | |
|---|---|
 Philip S. Balboni.png | |
| Born | Philip Scribner Balboni February 15, 1943 Norwood, Massachusetts |
| 🏳️ Nationality | American |
| 🏫 Education | Boston College Columbia University |
| 💼 Occupation | Media entrepreneur, broadcaster, journalist, family business owner |
| 📆 Years active | 1967-Present |
| Known for | GlobalPost |
| 👩 Spouse(s) |
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| 👶 Children |
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Philip Scribner Balboni (born February 15, 1943) is an American journalist and media entrepreneur who has worked in broadcast and cable television, newspapers, wire services and digital media.
Balboni is founder, chief executive officer and co-executive editor of DailyChatter[1], a daily email newsletter devoted to world news. He is also the founder and former president of New England Cable News[2] and GlobalPost, as well as former vice president and news director of WCVB-TV[3], a local television news station in Boston.
He served as a member of the Board of Visitors of the Columbia Journalism School,[4] and is currently a member of the Advisory Board of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School.[5]
Early Life and Education[edit]
Balboni was born and raised in Norwood, Massachusetts. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree magna cum laude from Boston College in English literature, with minors in philosophy and French literature.[6]
Balboni served two years on active duty as a United States Army officer. In 1965, he served in Vietnam.[1][6]
Afterward, Balboni attended the Sorbonne, where he received a certificate in French. He went on to become a Ford Foundation Fellow at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.[6]
Career[edit]
Balboni began his journalism career in 1967 as a general assignment reporter for The Richmond Times-Dispatch in Virginia.[7]
WCVB-TV[edit]
At WCVB-TV, the ABC affiliate television station in Boston, Balboni held a series of management positions from 1972 to 1990. He served as editorial director from 1972 to 1982, overseeing the research and writing of all station editorials under the general supervision of its Editorial Board led by Harvard historian Oscar Handlin[8]. In 1982, he became vice president and news director. In that year, the New York Times described WCVB as “America’s best TV station.”[9][10] In early 1982, he conceived and launched the nightly news magazine “Chronicle”[11] which has gone on to become and remain one of the most successful local television programs in American history[12].
Hearst Corporation[edit]
From 1990 to 1994, Balboni served as special assistant to Frank Bennack, the CEO of the Hearst Corporation[13], with responsibility for technology strategy and new projects. During this period, Balboni was a founding member of the News in the Future Consortium at the MIT Media Lab[14] where he served as an executive board member.
New England Cable News[edit]
Balboni first conceived of a 24-hour cable news service for New England while serving as news director at WCVB-TV[15]. Upon moving to the Hearst Corporation in New York, he created a joint venture between Hearst and Continental Cablevision, then the third-largest cable television provider in the US[6][13]. From 1992 until 1994, Balboni served as chairman of the NECN board, becoming its president in April of that year. He then led the network until 2008. In that time, NECN had more than 3.7 million subscribers in the six-state region[16].
NECN is now owned by NBC Universal, a division of Comcast.
GlobalPost[edit]
Balboni left NECN in 2008 to become co-founder, president and CEO of GlobalPost, one of the first native digital news sites started in the United States.
With GlobalPost, Balboni and his co-founder Charles M. Sennott, a former Boston Globe foreign correspondent, created the country’s first purely digital international news organization. GlobalPost won the George Foster Peabody Award and Edward R. Murrow Awards for international video reporting.
In late 2015, GlobalPost was sold to the WGBH Educational Foundation.[17]
Death of James Foley[edit]
James Foley was an American journalist and videographer working for GlobalPost as a freelance war correspondent in the Syrian Civil War. Islamic State militants abducted Foley in November 2012 and held him hostage before murdering him in August 2014.
GlobalPost dispatched a team of professional investigators to Syria to search for the missing reporter. An American mission to save Foley in 2014 failed to discover him, however. “I shall regret for as long as I live that I could not gain his freedom,” Balboni later wrote in an op-ed in USA Today. “That regret and the memory of the long search will be with me forever.”
Balboni and the Foley family were critical of the U.S. government’s efforts to free the reporter, citing U.S. laws against negotiating with or paying ransoms to terrorists. In 2015, after ordering a review of the federal government’s policies regarding hostage negotiations, President Barack Obama streamlined the federal government’s policies on working with the families of hostages. Obama said federal prosecutors would no longer file criminal charges against the families of American hostages who pay ransoms, but the law remained the same.
DailyChatter[edit]
In March 2016, Balboni launched DailyChatter, a subscription-based email newsletter devoted exclusively to world news. The publication is founded on the principles of independence and non-partisanship with a mission to inform Americans at a time when global news reporting continues to decline.
Other Professional Activities[edit]
Balboni served as a member of the national jury of the duPont-Columbia Awards in Broadcast Journalism and was a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Columbia Journalism Review.
He is also the managing general partner of P. Christopher Associates, a commercial real estate business.
Personal Life[edit]
He is married to Elizabeth Cannon Houghteling. They live in Cambridge, Massachusetts . They have a son, Philip Cannon Houghteling Balboni, a doctoral candidate in social anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley. Balboni also has a daughter, Jessica Scribner Brett Balboni, a writer and editor in New York city.
References[edit]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Philip S. Balboni - Founder, CEO and Co-Executive Editor". DailyChatter. March 2019. Retrieved May 25, 2021. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ Gonzalez, John (February 14, 2008). "NECN Founder and President Stepping Down". Boston Magazine. Retrieved 25 May 2021.
- ↑ "Philip S. Balboni". C-SPAN. 2007. Retrieved 25 May 2021. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ "Board of Visitors". Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Retrieved 25 May 2021. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ "Advisory Board". Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. Retrieved 25 May 2021. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 "Philip S. Balboni - President, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder". Public Radio International. Retrieved May 17, 2021. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ Legg, Heidi (February 12, 2014). "Phil Balboni #32". The Editorial. Retrieved May 25, 2021.
- ↑ Trigoboff, Dan (August 18, 2003). "Making His Cable News Dream Come True". Broadcasting & Cable. Retrieved May 25, 2021.
- ↑ Schwartz, Tony (February 15, 1981). "Some say this is America's best TV station". New York Times. Retrieved January 15, 2021.
- ↑ Lamson, Peggy (1987). Stay Tuned: Behind the Scenes at Channel 5. David R. Godine, Publisher. p. 4. ISBN 0879236817. Search this book on
- ↑ "Philip S. Balboni". Massachusetts Broadcasters Hall of Fame. Retrieved May 17, 2021. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ Greeley, Paul (October 11, 2019). "WCVB's 'Chronicle' Team Inducted into TV History". TV News Check. Retrieved January 15, 2021.
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 The Continental Cablevision Story - From Community Antenna Television to the Information Superhighway. Pilot House Associates. 2015. pp. 214–216. ISBN 9781882771400. Search this book on
- ↑ Herther, Nancy K. (January 19, 2009). "Internet Journalism Gains Another Foothold With GlobalPost". Information Today, Inc. Retrieved May 25, 2021.
- ↑ "Getting off the Ground - The Journalism School Knight Case Studies Initiative". Columbia University. Retrieved May 25, 2021. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ Sullivan, Steve (May 8, 2000). "NECN Comes Into Its Own". Broadcasting & Cable. Retrieved January 15, 2021.
- ↑ Heslam, Jessica (June 19, 2009). "Comcast buys up NECN". Boston Herald. Retrieved May 25, 2021.
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