On the spectrum of freedom, Charles Overby pretty much has the full range covered. He heads the Freedom Forum, which opens its new $450 million Newseum Friday in Washington, D.C. And, in his free time, he’s a director at the Corrections Corporation of America, which runs the nation’s largest privatized prison system.
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The Freedom Forum says it is a “nonpartisan foundation dedicated to free press, free speech and free spirit for all people.” CCA says its vision is “to be the best adult corrections company in the United States.”
Overby is a former Gannett newsman who led The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., to a public service Pulitzer in the early 1980s.
He became president and CEO of the Gannett Foundation in 1989. In 1991, after former Gannett CEO Al Neuharth re-directed (some might even say “hijacked”) the foundation’s mission and money, it was renamed the Freedom Forum.
Overby joined the Nashville-based Correction Corporation’s board in 2001. Today, he is chairman, president and CEO of the Freedom Forum and CEO of the Newseum.
“My home is right here at the Newseum residences,” Overby told Washingtonian.com. “This is one big campus. We’ve got the museum, 135 apartments, Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant. There are days where I never leave the building. I get up, work all day here, and then have dinner at the Source.”
Some of CCA’s guests must get outside more than that.
(Note: The writer worked at Gannett almost a dozen years.)
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