Spanish media chief urges news agencies to explore alternative revenue sources

A Spanish media chief, Mr Jose Antonio Vera GIL, has urged news agencies to explore alternative sources of revenue beyond their traditional media products and clients.
He made the call on Tuesday at the ongoing fourth News Agencies World Congress in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Vera GIL, who is the Chief Executive Officer of Spanish News Agency (EFE), said that the call was necessary to enable the agencies overcome their current financial difficultiesu.
He said that there had been an increasing decline in media revenue since 2008 due to the global financial melt down.
According to him, 27, 443 journalists lost their jobs in Spain in 2010 due to the emergence of free online communication media.
Vera GIL, who was spoke on the topic, " News Agencies in a Paperless World", also said that advertising incomes declined by 20 per cent in Spain due to the emerging trend.
He said that news agencies could , however, compete with the Internet through rigorous efforts, press releases, analysis, events and corporate communications.
According to him, online communication is second to the television in Spain, and it is free.
He said that publishers now believed more in marketing than in journalism, and that despite promotion gifts, newspaper circulation figures kept declining.
In his presentation,  Mr Emmanuel Hogg, President and CEO, Agence France - Press, said that portfolios of clients was fast changing and that text alone was no longer enough as a product.
He said that multimedia was a new trend and that there was the need to introduce more links to widen and enrich content.
Hogg said news agencies no longer won the battle of  ' 'what is going on" but had won that of production, speed and transmission.
" What is not won yet is the battle of values," he said.
In his remarks, the Director-General of the ITAR - TASS, Moscow, Mr Sergey Mikhaylov, stressed the need for news agencies to keep abreast of the volatile marketing demands.
He urged the news agencies to work harder in order to keep their through speedy delivery of  services.
Mikhaylov, who spoke on " News Agencies and Marketing Challenges", said agencies should also be more proactive  to meet clients' demands.
He said that news agencies must develop and embrace new technologies to stay ahead of clients, adding that a modern agency reporter must be multi media in skills and adapt to new information challenges.
More than 400 participants from 70 news agencies, including the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) are attending the congress.

(NAN)

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