Creation of a new instrument for the gathering and distribution of News, called the Overseas News Agency, was announced today.
Officers are: president, Jacob Blaustein, of Baltimore, director of Pan-American Petroleum and Transport Co.; vice-presidents; George Backer, publisher of the New York Post, and Harold K. Guinzburg, president of Viking Press; secretary and managing director, Jacob Landau; chairman of the board of directors, Herbert Bayard Swope, former executive editor of the New York World; vice-chairman of the board, William Allen White, publisher of The Emporia Gazette.
Members of the board, who include representatives of the three leading religious denominations, are Dr. Frank Aydelotte, ex-president of Swarthmore College and head of the Institute for Advanced studies; Princeton; the Rev. Father Robert I. Gannon, president, Fordham University; John Francis Neylan, of San Francisco; William Jay Schieffelin; Prof. James T. Shotwell, of Columbia University; Dr. Abba Hillel Silver, of Cleveland, and Hendrik Willem van Loon, the author.
Although an outgrowth of the long-established Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the O.N.A. will be general in scope and wholly separate from the J.T.A., which will continue to function. Brought into being by a need of which the J.T.A. covered only a small section, the O.N.A. will concern itself primarily with covering the tribulations and triumphs of minorities, reporting all important developments affecting their national political and religious life.
It will cover accurately and objectively the type of news which today, because of the pressure of sport war news, is either crowded out or forgotten. It will in no sense attempt to compete with existing news services, to which it will regard itself as supplementary. It will devote itself exclusively to reporting facts. It will indulge in no propaganda, preach no theory or philosophy.
Offices of the O.N.A. have been established at 165 West 46th Street.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
