New editorial positions at MaltaToday, Reno Bugeja to anchor online show

MaltaToday founder Saviour Balzan has relinquished his role as managerial editor, to take up his position as executive director of Mediatoday.

Matthew Vella, executive editor of MaltaToday, will retain responsibility for all editorial matters, newsroom management, and news strategy at the newspaper.

“After founding Mediatoday 21 years ago, I feel it is right to focus entirely on business development, and see the company through the next years,” Balzan said.

“My passion remains good journalism, but I have now disengaged from editorial management and its titles. Matthew Vella is the right person at the right time to uphold the ethos of MediaToday’s editorial policy and steward it in this digital age and fast-moving industry.”

Balzan’s role is part of the company’s direction to further extend its media services and ensure wider financial sustainability.

“Mediatoday is not just a newspaper: it is a media company that produces various newspaper titles, magazines, TV programmes, and other online products. I will be overseeing these operations,” Balzan said.

Matthew Vella this week also announced new posts in the newsroom structure at MaltaToday. Karl Azzopardi, an award-winning journalist at MaltaToday, is now assistant editor. Laura Calleja takes up the role of features editor. Matthew Agius is formally MaltaToday’s senior journalist for court and legal affairs.

“Editorial positions reflect higher degrees of responsibility at MaltaToday. As a newspaper we pride ourselves in nurturing talent that drives our titles forward with new ideas: people like Karl Azzopardi and Laura Calleja are mainstays in our newsroom, while Matthew Agius is arguably Malta’s foremost court reporter with recent scoops under his belt such as the story on the Haftar mercenaries’ evacuation from Libya to Malta.”

Vella also announced important projects this year for MaltaToday, which will lead a consortium of media outlets in an important news services for European Parliament news. David Lindsey, former Malta Independent editor and a former MaltaToday senior journalist, has been recruited to steward the project.

MaltaToday will also be hosting the veteran broadcaster Reno Bugeja, formerly head of news at TVM, in his new online-only show Reno Bugeja Jistaqsi.

“2021 is a world in which digital and mobile, live and instant, become bywords of the news product. It is a challenge, not always an easy one for a legacy newspaper such as ours. We welcome young minds who drive us to change with their unquestioned embrace of the new. But we also like to marry some form of tradition with technological disruption, and keep the values of journalism as we know them in this world of content creation,” Vella said.

“We welcome Reno Bugeja to our expanding line of media productions. He is arguably Malta’s best interviewer. I know his agenda-setting hardtalk-style interviews will set the standard in current affairs. Our partners on Reno Bugeja Jistaqsi understand that being noticed online requires credibility and strong news values.”