Obituary: Bob Vosburgh, PLMA News Director, Veteran Trade Journalist

Services will be held July 20 in Milford, Conn., for Bob Vosburgh, a veteran food retail trade journalist best known for bringing insight into emerging trends in fresh food, health and wellness, and private brands.

Vosburgh, who most recently was the spokesman for the U.S. store brands industry through his online video work for the Private Label Manufacturers Association (PLMA), died suddenly July 15 in Milford at age 54.

Vosburgh joined PLMA in 2013 and was news director of PLMALive! where he oversaw various aspects of the organization’s video and digital platforms. A major focus of his was PLMA Category Profile reports, an ongoing series of informative and well-received videos that examined individual private label categories.

He compiled dozens of such reports over the past four years, which were watched by visitors to PLMA’s website. He annually filed a series of live reports on new and innovative store brands products from the exhibition floor during PLMA’s trade shows in Chicago and Amsterdam. He also contributed to monthly news desk reports, wrote scripts and recruited experts for a wide range of PLMA presentations.

PLMA President Brian Sharoff said, “Bob’s insight and experience will be impossible to replace. He understood the industry and the subtle and not-so-subtle ways in which it operates. He was a reporter’s reporter, and that is the highest praise journalism offers.”

Prior to joining PLMA, Vosburgh was a longtime group editor of the trade publication Supermarket News, where he oversaw coverage of fresh foods and natural/organic. He previously worked as an editor at Griffin Publishing’s Modern Food Service publication. Admired by colleagues and respected by sources in the trade, Vosburgh was awarded a number of prestigious business journalism awards, including Fairchild Publication’s Newsmaker of the Year in 2001.

Early in his career, Vosburgh was an on-air reporter and the New Jersey state correspondent for WCBS Newsradio 88 in New York; prior to that, he was an editor and anchor for WPDH and WEOK radio in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. He was a 1987 journalism graduate of New York University.

Vosburgh is survived by his spouse, Kai, and his siblings and their partners, Jonathan, Charles and Ann Marie, Lisa and Alex, Donna and Omar, and his four-legged baby, Daisy. He was predeceased by his parents, Robert and Judith Vosburgh.

A celebration of life will be held at 12:30 p.m. July 20 at the Cody-White Funeral Home in Milford. Friends and family may call from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. prior to the service. Interment will be private. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations in Vosburgh's name may be made to Alcoholics Anonymous.