Saša Vučinić
| Saša Vučinić | |
|---|---|
| Nationality | Serbian |
| Alma mater | Harvard University |
| Occupation | Journalist |
| Known for | Co-founder of the Media Development Loan Fund |
| Notable work | Evropa za nas, Media Development Loan Fund |
Saša Vučinić is a Serbian journalist and is the co-founder and former CEO and Managing Director of the Media Development Loan Fund.
Vučinić graduated with a degree in international law from the University of Belgrade in 1985 and attended the General Manager Program at Harvard Business School in 2000. In 2003, he attended the Private Equity Executive Education Course at Harvard Business School.
Vučinić began his journalistic career in 1979 as a member of the staff of the Belgrade political newsweekly Non. He became editor-in-chief of Non in 1989. In 1990, he was named editor-in-chief and general manager of B-92, a Serbian radio station.
From April 1990 to April 1993, Vučinić was the general manager and editor-in-chief of Radio B92 in Belgrade, one of the few independent news outlets that operated in Yugoslavia during Slobodan Milošević’s regime. He established B92 as a legal entity and was its first CEO. From April 1993 to May 1995, Vučinić worked as a media consultant to the Soros Foundation Network in Prague.
In 1995, with seed money from George Soros's Open Society Institute, Vučinić and the late Washington Post journalist Stuart Auerbach formed the Media Development Investment Fund (MDIF), an international non-profit organization based in New York City, Prague, Hong Kong, and Singapore with the goal of establishing a fund to provide loans to independent press organizations in new democracies with histories of government oppression of the media.
In July 2005, Vučinić recorded a TED talk in Oxford, UK, in which he noted that 83% of the people in the world live in countries without an independent press and thus don't know what's really going on in their homelands. The “information” they receive is twisted and colored, and as a result they “are deprived of understanding their reality.”
On May 4, 2006, Bruno Giussani of TED reported that Vučinić's idea had become reality: “for the first time a social cause will be listed on a major stock exchange.” He explained that the MDLF, the Swiss bank Vontobel, and a Zurich firm, responsAbility, were jointly introducing “a security that mobilises private investment to support a free press – basically a bond with a social element.”
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