Director General Valchev: "BTA Gives Examples that We Hope Will Inspire Other Institutions and Bulgarians in General"

UPDATED Director General Valchev: "BTA Gives Examples that We Hope Will Inspire Other Institutions and Bulgarians in General"

Metodi Yordanov, Dimitrina Solakova, Borislava Bibinovska

Left to right: Vice President Iliana Iotova, BTA Director General Kiril Valchev, and National Assembly Chair Nataliya Kiselova at the BTA National Press Club, Sofia, February 16, 2025 (BTA Photo/Vladimir Shokov)

Sofia,

16.02.2025 17:26 | UPDATED 16.02.2025 18:48

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On this date, February 16, the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) marks 127 years since its first news bulletin by presenting the transformed face of the agency, BTA Director General Kiril Valchev said at an event at the BTA National Press Club marking the anniversary. "In doing so, Bulgaria's national news agency sets several examples that we hope will inspire other institutions and Bulgarians in general," he added.

BTA welcomes its 127th anniversary with a hub for its archives, its own typeface and a renovated newsroom.

Valchev pointed out that the first example BTA sets is that updates and improvements can happen in small steps, in accordance with everyone's strengths. "At the entrance of the new BTA information centre, which we named BTA Archive Hub, is the work of Prof. Georgi Yankov, Rector of the National Academy of Arts, which is called Your Audience, he explained. Valchev specified that the work presents faces whose eyes light up when the viewer moves. In Valchev's words, this is a symbol that the only way to be noticed is to keep moving, even though the eyes of one of these faces never light up - a sign that there is always at least one person who cannot be moved by anything and will always be dissatisfied with something, Valchev said. As Albert Einstein wrote to his son, "Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you have to keep moving," Valchev said. And he stressed that for four years, now the BTA has not stopped moving.

"Over the past four years, the BTA has done so in several ways, he noted. With our own forces - with the appointed maintenance staff, who have been renovating for the fourth year now room by room, including those in which we arranged the archives," Valchev said.

Under the Beautiful Bulgaria Project, the BTA in 2023 first built a parking lot in the neglected backyard of the building and an external elevator to the facade, which also reaches the fourth floor, where the National Press Club in Sofia is, the BTA Director General recalled.

"Again, we are counting on Beautiful Bulgaria to approve our projects for the replacement of the old small elevator on the other side of the building and for the renovation of the common spaces that do not look good - the corridors, stairs, doors and toilets, and with our own forces we will make and maintain landscaping with a unified overall look," he said.

Under the Recovery and Resilience Plan, BTA is equipping the library and archives premises with a centre for digitisation, which will be completed in 2026, the Director General also said.

"We are counting on the Regional Development Programme 2021-2027 of the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works for BTA's largest project, the World of News," Valchev announced. He explained that the aim is to continue the renovation of the BTA building in Sofia with modern air conditioning and roof panels to generate its own electricity, transform the surrounding space with a garden "in which we present symbolic places of the world, and create a Museum of News in partnership with the National Polytechnic Museum," he said. The project has already been included in the main list of prioritised project ideas for integrated urban development approved by the Sofia Municipal Council, Valchev said.

The second example BTA gives on its 127th anniversary is about preserving the memory of Bulgaria, Valchev noted. The dusty BTA bulletins, the first of which was dated February 16, 1898, which were in the attic, are now in modern air-conditioned premises, Kiril Valchev announced.

"BTA will now be able to use the library of about 90,000 books arranged in the new premises, and my ambition is to try to restore its regular replenishment with specialised literature in the areas where we make the news," Valchev also said.

The third example the BTA gives on its 127th anniversary is that Bulgaria needs a community with more continuous cooperation and communication, he announced.

"We are doing it with the renovated newsroom, which now has conditions for improved work organisation with continuous communication between all the agency's units," Valchev said. Because the wonderful large room on the top floor of the agency had been partitioned with windows over the years, and so the different newsrooms had become isolated from each other, and some had scattered into different rooms, he said.

The fourth example that the BTA is giving on its 127th anniversary is with the ever-expanding access to the knowledge of today provided by the media, he said. "Today, we present the physical dimensions of this access with the new reading room and the entrances with ramps and the elevator adapted for people with disabilities," Valchev said.

The access to knowledge of today is also reflected in the expanding correspondent network with national press clubs of BTA, which give equal presence in the news and in the general conversations of Bulgarians in the country and abroad, said Kiril Valchev. In the last four years, BTA has tripled its national press clubs and preserved and developed the 14 press clubs opened in the previous 18 years, and currently BTA has opened a total of 42 national press clubs, which are also correspondent bureaus of Bulgaria's national news agency.

BTA provides free access to the news of 50 national news agencies thanks to contracts for free exchange of information with specific clauses, concluded over the past four years, which were added to the contracts for paid news of five global news agencies, Valchev said. BTA has also become the headquarters of the Association of Balkan News Agencies - South East Europe (ABNA - SEE), which is also a hub for news from the region, he added.

In his speech Kiril Valchev also focused on the work of journalists. The enormous responsibility of the media, as the bearers of the knowledge of today, equates them to schools, he said. And that is why it is worth considering whether it is not right to equate the average salary of journalists in the public media and experts in the Council for Electronic Media with the average salaries of teachers, he said.

"The fifth example that the BTA is giving today is by presenting a uniform look, which our whole country needs," the Director General added. We are doing it with the new LIK font, named after the restored BTA magazine. It is based on the letters of the disciples of the Holy Brothers Cyril and Methodius, commissioned by the BTA from the National Academy of Arts, he said. Valchev explained that the BTA will make the LIK font available for free use by all public institutions of Bulgaria in the name of achieving a unified image of this country.

His Holiness the Bulgarian Patriarch and Metropolitan of Sofia Daniil was among the guests at Sunday's event. The anniversary was attended by the National Assembly Chair Natalia Kiselova, Vice President Iliana Iotova, ministers, MPs, representatives of institutions and others.

/DS/