Current (https://current.org/tag/tom-bettag/)
PBS has postponed the rollout of an online news aggregation site called PBSnews.org that it had planned to start in January or February. … Plans for the news site had grown out of the PBS News and Public Affairs Initiative and a report filed almost two years ago by Tom Bettag, a network news veteran …
Tom Bettag, the former ABC Nightline and CBS News producer, says he’s “on a very fast timeline” to report to PBS by June 15 [2009] about what public TV’s separate and unequal newsgathering units could and should do by collaborating online….
PBS will go public Wednesday with discussion of its News & Public Affairs Initiative — an ongoing study that’s weighing options for cooperation and online collaboration among its news units and with those of public radio. Journalists from public TV and radio have had their “first sit-downs about what might be possible in the syncing of radio and television,” says Tom Thomas, co-c.e.o. of the Station Resource Group. Appearing with PBS officials in a PBS Showcase session, 11 a.m. May 13, will be project facilitator Tom Bettag, former ABC Nightline e.p. The initiative is funded by a Pew Charitable Trusts grant to the public TV network. Reps from the NewsHour, Frontline and other PBS public-affairs units and from NPR and other public radio news units have been invited to meet for discussions the day before. PBS asked Bettag to consider how public TV can reinvent its public affairs offerings, and Bettag has been quizzing leaders of news units, according to David Fanning, e.p. of Frontline.