News Agencies in the Turbulent Era of the Internet PDF
Preview News Agencies in the Turbulent Era of the Internet
News Agencies in the Turbulent Era of the Internet News agencies in the turbulent era of the Internet. – (Col·lecció Lexikon ; 5) Referències bibliogràfiques ISBN 9788439383031 I. Boyd-Barrett, Oliver, ed. II. Catalunya. Generalitat III. Agència Catalana de Notícies IV. Col·lecció: Col·lecció Lexikon ; 5 1. Agències de notícies 070 Llicència Creative Commons "Reconeixement, amb usos no comercials i sense obra derivada" 3.0 News Agencies in the Turbulent Era of the Internet © Editor: Oliver Boyd-Barrett © Texts: Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Anna Nogué Regàs, Camille Laville, Marco Tortora, Gavin Ellis, Patrick White, Jürgen Wilke, Ignacio Muro Benayas, Stijn Joye, Jonas Batista, Susana A. Ribeiro, Chris Paterson, K.M.Shrivastava, Elena Vartanova, Tatjana Frlova and Xin Xin Translation and editorial services provided by: Discobole S.L. Design: Jordi Casas Edition: Eix Comunicació. The creative project, SL Layout: Oscar Cusidó Published by: Government of Catalonia. Presidential Department. Legal Deposit: ISBN: 978-84-393-8303-1 A mong media users, news agencies are perhaps the greatest unknown entities. Even though new technologies, and the Internet in particular, have begun to have a gradual impact on this reality in recent years, news agencies carry on doing what they have always done, far from the gaze of the public and often without the public realising it. This contrasts sharply with the enormous structural importance that these organisations have as high-quality sources of information and points of reference. The structural, advertising and economic crisis that many media organisations have experienced has placed even greater emphasis on the valuable support that news agencies give to the sector. Producing high-quality information requires the media to make a considerable investment and, at a time when these have seen their revenues fall, often forcing them to try and make cutbacks, the services that news agencies provide contribute decisively to improvements in information quality and plurality. However, the contribution that news agencies make is not limited to information products. They also provide human capital: news agencies often become trainers of new journalists and, from this point of view, they make a significant contribution to the viability and dynamics of the sector. By giving structural support to the media, news agencies carry out an important public service function. It is for this reason that countries around the world need to ensure the existence of strong, modern and well-resourced national news agencies. The creation and maintenance of public news agencies is often the best way to achieve that. The mission of public news agencies is to guarantee broad information coverage, both thematically and territorially, over and above purely commercial considerations, thus making information available to the public at large. They also contribute to the consolidation of a country’s national identity, both internally and externally. In Catalonia, the first experience of a news agency providing information in the country’s own language began 30 years ago in 1978, when the late Ramon Barnils set up the first Catalan news service for EFE. The media in our language have consequently enjoyed a high-quality service for many years, which has allowed the Catalan communication system to be strengthened. Likewise, in the private sector, the Europa Press news agency’s work and commitment to the Catalan language, as well as to the political and sociocultural reality that gives it meaning, is remarkable. Nevertheless, to fully articulate our communication system, it was important to have our own national news agency. Hence the creation of the Agència Catalana de Notícies (ACN, Catalan News Agency), which celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2009 with the satisfaction of having met its objectives and the desire to carry on moving forward along the same lines. The ACN is one of the few news agencies to have been created in Europe in recent years; that is to say, conceived in the midst of the digital era. Its so-far brief experience can be considered a veritable success, since our public news agency is a pioneer in the use of new information technologies, which allow it to adapt fully to the specific needs of the Catalan communication system. Details of this experience and those of EFE and other important news agencies around the world can help us gain a more accurate picture of the sector’s situation. Indeed, that is the aim of the new volume from the Lexikon collection that you are holding in your hands. Global communication, together with all other types of communication, means that it is now more crucial than ever to ensure the continuity of these organisations which form the cornerstones of any communication system. Joan Manuel Tresserras Minister for Culture and the Media, Government of Catalonia 1. National News Agencies in the Turbulent Era of the Internet Oliver Boyd-Barrett Major Themes 1999 to 2009 Writing early in 2000 (Boyd-Barrett, 2000), following a 1999 presentation in Athens to the European Alliance of Press Agencies (later renamed the European Alliance of News Agencies), I outlined reasons for concern about the role and future of news agencies. I qualified these concerns noting the longevity of news agencies both as a genus and as named institutions, and the recurrences in the kinds of crisis they experienced. These typically had to do with the competing benefits of different structures of ownership; the complex relationships between States and news agencies; the ties and potential conflicts of interest between agencies and their (owner-) members and clients; the perennial challenge of how to satisfy media (and other) client needs while also paying the bills; and the difficulty in judging how best to invest in and exploit technology for faster delivery of accurate information while also protecting copyright. I noted that the Internet had heightened the visibility of news agencies in the attention of news consumers and that this added considerable value to efforts to develop positive branding of news agencies, for their own benefit and for the benefit of “retail” media who used them. I discussed the systemic character of the global news system, alluding to dysfunctions such as its hierarchic character and growing competition against incumbent national agencies, from inside their domestic markets and externally from international news agencies. I wondered aloud whether national agencies had become anomalies in a period of deregulation and globalization, even whether “national” news would continue to seem important to local media. Other perceived problems included the growing concentration of power in newspaper and broadcast industries, and the implications for the continuing sustainability of the cooperative model of news agency ownership, best represented by the Associated Press (AP), and for the development of internal competition among larger, dissatisfied members, even if such challenges had generally proved unsuccessful or of short duration across news agency history. I argued that the business model for a successful national news agency often seemed to require effective monopoly status within this category of news supplier. A national agency needs to be seen to offer a credibly comprehensive and authoritative “national” service and there is generally room in the market for only one such provider. I lamented the decline of older traditions of “public service” in news provision, typified by the pre-deregulation era of national public broadcasters, a decline which also threatened to undermine one of the unique selling points of traditional national agencies. Some were beginning to deliver services better suited to a more commercial, multimedia environment. I wondered how those agencies that had previously depended on substantial subsidy from the State would fare if subsidies were removed, in line with the neo-liberal philosophy of an unregulated market place, or if State-agency agreements would be transformed from gentlemanly understandings to commercial contracts. I questioned whether agencies that had hitherto relied primarily on media markets (among them, most cooperatives), and/or whose media owners were unwilling to pay subventions that increased faster than the rate of inflation, would sustain news-gathering without supplementing their income from other kinds of service. I talked about how these problems were exacerbated in some of the emerging economies, partly related to resource issues, partly to repressive political contexts, impoverished client media, undependable sources of revenue, and a collapse in the integrity of discourses about “development news,” with which some had framed their mission statements. I asked whether “big” agencies would continue to need “small” agencies, in a continuing pattern of unequal news exchange that had once contributed to
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