Globe's Sennott set to join Global News

Veteran correspondent among group to start US-based website

Charles Sennott cofounded venture

A group of veteran foreign correspondents, including The Boston Globe's Charles M. Sennott and Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Matthew McAllester, will be joining Global News Enterprises LLC, the first US-based website devoted exclusively to international news, which is set to launch early next year.

Sennott, 45, who cofounded Global News, is being named executive editor and vice president. He will be responsible for building a team of 70 foreign correspondents across the world and overseeing a series of in-depth, multimedia reports to be featured on the Global News website.

"At a time when newspapers are downsizing, and in some cases abandoning the mission to cover the world, we see an opportunity to step into that place," Sennott said. "We want to become the community for people on the Web who care a lot about international news."

Sennott has worked at the Globe since 1993, serving as the paper's Middle East bureau chief in Jerusalem from 1997 to 2001 and as the European bureau chief in London from 2001 to 2005.

More recently, he has worked for the Globe's special projects team, completing a yearlong multimedia project on veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Sennott, who is taking a buyout the Globe is offering to employees as part of a cost-cutting initiative, is leaving the newspaper on April 4. He will begin his new job on April 7. Global News will be headquartered in Boston with about 10 to 15 full-time employees, many of whom will be editing. The foreign correspondents will be paid a monthly retainer fee.

New England Cable News founder Philip S. Balboni is launching the site with Sennott, having raised more than $7 million from a group of local investors led by billionaire Amos B. Hostetter Jr., the chairman of Pilot House Associates and a cofounder of Continental Cablevision, one of the nation's first cable companies. Benjamin Taylor, former publisher of the Globe, and Paul Sagan, the president of Akamai Technologies, are also among the investor group.

"I started working on Global News two years ago, and when I finished the basic business planning and began looking for a great editorial partner, Charlie was the first person that came into my mind," Balboni said. "He's a terrific journalist and a terrific young man."

McAllester, a former foreign reporter for Newsday, is joining Global News as part of a small team of veteran correspondents who will work on in-depth multimedia projects. McAllester was one of several journalists who was imprisoned by Saddam Hussein's secret police in March 2003 and released eight days later.

"This is just a great opportunity to find a new platform for the kind of journalism my generation and several generations of foreign correspondents so love doing," McAllester said.

McAllester is among the cadre of veteran journalists who will help mentor other correspondents, making Global News a training ground for the next generation of foreign reporters at a time when newspapers are cutting back international coverage.

Other high-profile journalists who will be writing and working on multimedia projects for Global News, according to Sennott, include Joshua Hammer, a former Newsweek reporter who worked as the magazine's bureau chief in Berlin and Jerusalem; Sam Kiley, a former Times of London bureau chief for Africa and the Middle East; and Scott Anderson, a veteran war correspondent and contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine.

H.D.S Greenway, a foreign correspondent best known for his Vietnam War coverage and a former Globe editor, will also contribute an occasional column to the website.

Sebastian Junger, author of the best-selling book "A Perfect Storm" and a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, will work with Global News to help mentor its younger correspondents, but will not write for the organization's website, Sennott said.

Jenn Abelson can be reached at abelson@globe.com.