News Agencies in the Turbulent Era of the Internet

218 Pages·2010·2.28 MB·English

by  Oliver Boyd-Barrett

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