India’s National News Agency Editor-in-Chief Visits BTA National Press Club in Skopje
CEO and Editor-in-Chief of the Press Trust of India (PTI), Vijay Joshi, visited on Sunday the National Press Club of the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) in Skopje, Republic of North Macedonia.
At the invitation of BTA Director General Kiril Valchev, Joshi also visited on Saturday the BTA National Press Club in Belgrade, Serbia, where he became acquainted with part of BTA's correspondent network as a source of news from the Balkans.
At the BTA National Press Club in Skopje, Joshi was welcomed by BTA correspondent Marinela Velichkova, while in Belgrade he was received by BTA correspondent Teodora Encheva. He also met with Bulgaria's Ambassadors to Skopje and Belgrade, Zhelyazko Radukov and Angel Angelov, respectively, and visited the Bulgarian Cultural and Information Centre next to the BTA National Press Club in Skopje.
"It was an absolute pleasure to visit the BTA office in Skopje. Best wishes to the staff from PTI," Joshi wrote in the guestbook of the BTA National Press Club.
On Thursday and Friday, Joshi and Valchev, together with representatives of the PTI and BTA teams, took part in the spring conference and annual general meeting of MINDS International – Media Innovation Network in Vienna, Austria. The organization brings together 26 leading news agencies from around the world for cooperation in the field of information services. During the forum, BTA presented Digital Life for BTA's Archives, dedicated to the agency's 128-year history. The presentation was delivered by Svoboda Todorova, head of the Digitization of BTA's Specialized Archive and Reference Funds project, and Dimitar Genev, the project's system administrator.
On Monday, Joshi will visit Tryavna as a guest at the launch of a BTA initiative featuring a series of discussions dedicated to the 160th anniversary of the birth of Pencho Slaveykov and Bulgarian modernism. The event will take place on the poet's birthday at the Slaveykov House in his hometown. Joshi will also visit the Museum of Asian and African Art in Tryavna, which showcases a donation by Bulgarian sculptor Zlatko Paunov from his personal collection gathered in Tibet, Nepal, India, China and several African countries.
At the invitation of Bulgarian National Radio (BNR) Director General Milen Mitev, Joshi and Valchev will attend the annual BNR Top 20 Music Awards at the National Palace of Culture in Sofia on Tuesday.
This will be Joshi's second visit to Bulgaria after his April 2025 visit to BTA headquarters in Sofia, when he also visited the Agency's national press clubs in Plovdiv, Veliko Tarnovo and Kazanlak. "I do not think people in India know much about Bulgaria, so the opportunities for this cooperation are enormous. I am convinced that BTA will help Indians learn more about this small but fascinating country," Joshi said during that visit.
On October 6, 2023, in Toronto, Canada, BTA and PTI signed a cooperation agreement during the 35th MINDS conference. Under the agreement, each side receives the full English-language news service of the other, with the right to use the information in its own news services. The agreement also provides for the daily exchange of one major news item from each country in English, accompanied by a photograph, to be published free of charge on the other agency's distribution channels with explicit attribution to the source. It also includes provisions for exchange of experience and professional visits by journalists and media professionals from both agencies.
Within the framework of the partnership agreement, in 2024 PTI special correspondent Aditi Khanna visited Sofia at BTA's invitation to cover the European Parliament elections and Bulgaria's parliamentary elections, while BTA correspondent Nikolay Velev covered India's general elections at PTI's invitation.
Founded in 2004, MINDS International is a global network of leading news agencies dedicated to cooperation in digital information services. BTA was unanimously admitted as a member of MINDS at the organization's 32nd conference in Helsinki, Finland, held in April 2022 under the motto "Stronger Together". PTI became a member the following year.
BTA currently maintains cooperation agreements with 16 MINDS member agencies, including Anadolu Agency (Turkiye), ANP (Netherlands), AMNA (Greece), ANSA (Italy), AFP (France), Associated Press, APA (Austria), Belga (Belgium), DPA (Germany), EFE (Spain), Kyodo News (Japan), LETA (Latvia), LUSA (Portugal), PAP (Poland), PTI (India), and Reuters.
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