Saša Vučinić is a
Serbia
Serbia (, ; Serbian language, Serbian: , , ), officially the Republic of Serbia (Serbian language, Serbian: , , ), is a landlocked country in Southeast Europe, Southeastern and Central Europe, situated at the crossroads of the Pannonian Bas ...
n
journalist
A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...
and is the co-founder of North Base Media VC, and co-founder and former CEO and Managing Director of the Media Development Loan Fund.
Early life and education
Vučinić graduated with a degree in international law from the
University of Belgrade
The University of Belgrade ( sr, / ) is a public university in Serbia. It is the oldest and largest modern university in Serbia.
Founded in 1808 as the Belgrade Higher School in revolutionary Serbia, by 1838 it merged with the Kragujevac-b ...
in 1985 and attended the General Manager Program at
Harvard Business School
Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA p ...
in 2000. In 2003, he attended the Private Equity Executive Education Course at
Harvard Business School
Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA p ...
.
Career
Non, B-92, and Soros
Vučinić began his journalistic career in 1979 as a member of the staff of the Belgrade political newsweekly ''Non''. He became editor-in-chief of ''Non'' in 1989. In 1990, he was named editor-in-chief and general manager of
B-92, a Serbian radio station.
From April 1990 to April 1993, Vučinić was the general manager and editor-in-chief of Radio B92 in Belgrade, one of the few independent news outlets that operated in Yugoslavia during Slobodan Milošević's regime. He established B92 as a legal entity and was its first CEO. From April 1993 to May 1995, Vučinić worked as a media consultant to the Soros Foundation Network in Prague.
MDIF (previously MDLF)
In 1995, with seed money from George Soros's
Open Society Institute
Open Society Foundations (OSF), formerly the Open Society Institute, is a grantmaking network founded and chaired by business magnate George Soros. Open Society Foundations financially supports civil society groups around the world, with a sta ...
, Vučinić and the late Washington Post journalist Stuart Auerbach formed the
Media Development Investment Fund
Media Development Investment Fund (MDIF), formerly Media Development Loan Fund, is a New York-registered non-profit 501(c)(3) organization and mission-driven investment fund that provides low-cost financing to independent news and information busin ...
(MDIF), an international non-profit organization based in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
,
Prague
Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...
,
Hong Kong
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...
, and
Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...
with the goal of establishing a fund to provide loans to independent press organizations in new democracies with histories of government oppression of the media.
In July 2005, Vučinić recorded a TED talk in Oxford, UK, in which he noted that 83% of the people in the world live in countries without an independent press and thus don't know what's really going on in their homelands. The “information” they receive is twisted and colored, and as a result they “are deprived of understanding their reality.”
On May 4, 2006, Bruno Giussani of TED reported that Vučinić's idea had become reality: “for the first time a social cause will be listed on a major stock exchange.” He explained that the MDLF, the Swiss bank Vontobel, and a Zurich firm, responsAbility, were jointly introducing “a security that mobilises private investment to support a free press – basically a bond with a social element.”
By 2012, MDLF had made over $100 million in loans to newspapers, magazines, radio stations and websites around the world, funding over 200 projects in 30 countries; by the same year, over 36 million people in the developing world were getting their news from media financed by MDLF.
Vučinić served as the CEO and Managing Director of MDLF until 31 March 2011, when he stepped down and was succeeded by Harlan Mandel, his deputy managing director for the previous 13 years. MDLF changed its name to the Media Development Investment Fund in 2013.
IndieVoices
Vučinić founded IndieVoices, a crowdfunding portal that raises funds for independent media, mostly in the developing world.
V Media Ventures
Vučinić is the founder and CEO of V Media Ventures, which was established in April 2011 in Singapore. It is “a boutique idea and project generator and incubator, operating in the field of independent media. It also serves as a boutique media management and media investment advisory firm.”
Publications
His book ''Evropa za nas'', written with Ljiljana Biuković and Miodrag Pepić, was published by Triangle Press in 1989.
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Vucinic, Sasa
Serbian journalists
Serbian human rights activists
Living people
Harvard Business School alumni
University of Belgrade Faculty of Law alumni
Male journalists
Year of birth missing (living people)