WAN-IFRA extends president's term

Martin Kall, chairman of the management board of Swiss-based Tamedia AG, was elected first vice president of WAN-IFRA, which represents more than 18 000 publications, 15 000 online sites and more than 3000 companies in more than 120 countries. He succeeds Horst Pirker, the former chairman of the board of Styria Media Group in Austria, who had been slated to become WAN-IFRA President in January 2011, but stepped down when he resigned from Styria in September.

Tore Stangebye, CEO of Norway-based Berner Gruppen, was re-elected treasurer.

O'Reilly, who became president of WAN-IFRA in December 2009 following the merger of the World Association of Newspapers and IFRA, was due to step down in December 2010. But his term was extended by a unanimous vote of the WAN-IFRA Annual General Meeting.

As chief executive officer of Independent News & Media, O'Reilly oversees a leading international newspaper and communication group with interests in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Northern Ireland and South Africa.

New board members

Six new board members were also elected: Wolfgang Bretschko, member of the board, Styria Media Group AG, Austria; Valdo Lehari Jr., CEO and publisher, Reutlinger General-Anzeiger Verlags-Gmbh & Co., Germany; Alessandro Bompieri, managing director, Newspaper Publishing Division, Il Sole 24 Ore SPA, Italy; Tanvir Ahmad Tahir, executive director, All Pakistan Newspapers Society, Pakistan; Michael Arpas, representing the Slovak Publishers Association, Slovakia, and Oleksander Chovhan, president, RIA Media Corporation.

A list of board members of WAN-IFRA can be found at wanifra.wordpress.com/ec-board/.

WAN-IFRA, based in Paris, France, and Darmstadt, Germany, with subsidiaries in Singapore, India, Spain, France and Sweden, is the global organisation of the world¹s newspapers and news publishers.

Learn more about WAN-IFRA at www.wan-ifra.org or through the WAN-IFRA Magazine at www.wan-ifra.org/magazine.