AFP-APA technological cooperation

AFP has joined forces with the Austrian news agencyAPA to develop an Event Manager, a multilingual application for the editorial management of news events. It is one of the cornerstones ofAFP's Rich Media News Agency Project, an ambitious project to transform the agency and sharpen its multimedia edge.

Designed to optimise the agency 's organisational capacities, the Event Manager is a tool which will link each of AFP's media production disciplines (text, photo, graphics, video), enabling all output elements created, wherever their geographical origin and whatever the media format, to be catalogued and directly associated with a root news event. The application will allow users to visualise in real time all editorial output planning associated with a news event, across all media output platforms. It will digitally link and index news events with all associated output material, provide detailed information on the organisation of cross-platform news event coverage, and introduce an element of automatic generation for AFP editorial planning schedules (diaries: planning documents for client editors...) Such a tool could be offered as a service to AFP customers.

AFP and APA are thus engaging in a cooperation process which is becoming iindispensable for news agencies facing the digital revolution. "These are days for cooperation. We have more to win by sharing than by protecting ourselves", said AFP CEO Pierre Louette, opening on October 8 in Paris a conference of MINDS International, an organization of 17 news agencies studying ways to boost innovation.