site.bta Bulgarian News Agency Marks 118th Anniversary

Bulgarian News Agency Marks 118th Anniversary

Sofia, February 16 (BTA) - The Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) is marking its 118th anniversary on Tuesday. It issued its first newsletter on February 16, 1898.

On January 27, 1898, Prince Ferdinand decreed the establishment of a state news agency with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Religions to deliver telegraph news wires from the world. By the same decree, editor and publisher Oskar Iskander was appointed BTA's director.

The first four-page newsletter, handwritten by the director, had seven news items: on stock and commodity exchange prices, events in the Balkan countries and the health of Princess Clementine of Orleans, Prince Ferdinand I's mother. The six copies were delivered to each subscriber in person.

On February 17, 1898, the seven news items bearing BTA's logo were published in the unofficial section of the State Gazette.

In its first year the news agency was allocated 20,000 gold leva from the Exchequer. Its staff consisted of a director and a clerk. The daily newsletters of two or three handwritten pages each were published for the Royal Palace, the prime minister and the ministers, and a few newspapers.

The first typewritten newsletter is dated December 4, 1901, but journalists continued writing in hand along with the typewritten version for two more years. Before the wars, BTA received most of its international news stories from two world agencies: Bureau Havas of Paris and Reuters of London.

BTA is one of the oldest news agencies in Europe. It is one of the nine news agencies operational in the end of the 19th century. Only the French Havas (later France Presse), the British Reuters and Press Association, the Danish Ritzaus Bureau, the Norwegian News Agency, the Hungarian News Agency, the Finnish Lehtikiva and the Swiss Telegraphic Agency were established earlier.