Alfian, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
News agencies, having adapted to the hunger for new types of media, are thriving amid information globalization instead of competing with the Internet, a media expert said here Monday.
Prof. Oliver Boyd-Barret of Bowling Green State University, Ohio, in the United States, said the Internet was initially considered a threat rather than opportunity for news agencies. "It reduced the costs of market-entry for news gathering and distribution," said Olivier.
However, the assumption has proven wrong. All major news agencies that operate news Websites now benefit from the Internet.
"The Internet has greatly expanded the number of potential clients for agency services, increased agency flexibility in generating novel information, and reduced the costs of distribution so that a greater proportion of expenditure could be dedicated to content and service quality," Oliver told a colloquium dubbed "The Future of News Agencies in Media Convergence Era".
The seminar was part of the 13th general assembly of the Organization of Asia-Pacific News Agencies and was attended by 39 agencies from 32 countries. The assembly takes place in Jakarta from December 9 to 14.
At the seminar, Prof. Alwi Dahlan, a communication expert from University of Indonesia and a former Indonesian information minister, discussed the role of the Internet in ushering in the "media convergence era".
He explained that printed, audio and visual features converged in the new medium of the Internet.
He said the Internet provided an opportunity for personal media to become a source of information for the public. He gave the example of now-famous tsunami footage captured by Cut Putri, a woman from Aceh, which was relayed by many TV stations.
The question in the convergence era, Alwi said, is who are the real (news) players? "Will the news agencies lose their power as information brokers?"
Oliver said that while the emergence of web-logs (`blogs') had considerable influence on news agencies, it didn't threaten their existence.
Few news sites or blogs had the resources to compete with major agencies and most depended heavily -- directly or indirectly -- on news agencies," he said, adding that research strongly suggested that established news agencies continue to have a strong presence on the web.
News agencies in general experienced a better period this year, Oliver said; however Western agencies were dominant.
Indeed, Reuters has been acquired by Thompson Corporation from Canada. Thus, the four biggest news agencies, Reuters, AP, Bloomberg, and Dow Jones, are controlled by businesses based in North America," said Oliver.
He added, however, that the most profound challenges facing news agencies were related to the news itself. Describing the work of news providers as a "public service", he said "greater transparency and sharper articulation" in selecting and presenting the news were in order, in view of "the severity of multiple crises around the world."
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