Editorial by Pierre Louette, AFP chief executive officer: A time for alliances
We are coming to the end of a year of multiple crises. We had the financial crisis, of course, which disrupted the global economy, halted growth and pushed up unemployment. But 2009 was also the year that threw into question the entire economic model of the media, notably the written press.
Both standard and classified adverts are becoming scarcer just as readers shaken by the crisis hesitate to buy their favourite papers. The Internet is gaining users but each one generates just one-tenth of the revenue generated by a reader or viewer of the traditional media. Beyond these financial losses, perhaps the gravest threat is that posed to the value of news itself. The concept of “freeconomics” – the free economy – is stimulating but also frightening; it can quickly degenerate into “freakonomics”, a monstrous creation capable of gobbling up some players.
More than ever, news agencies, whose financial model is especially in doubt, must invest in new technologies but also learn to unite with their colleagues to protect the sector and best serve client interests. AFP has thus joined with the Austrian agency APA to quickly equip itself with an “event manager,” long awaited by the editorial team and clients. A meeting at the AFP headquarters a few weeks ago of Minds International, a research and development association of 17 European news agencies, showed that there is a greater willingness than beforeto share the fruits of each other’s experiments and studies. A major meeting at The Associated Press in early September showed that a number of agencies around the world want to coordinate their efforts to protect their content, and their clients’, notably by using electronic “markers”.
The organization of a forum of Mediterranean press agencies in Marseille in June 2010 is another sign of the desire to come together, share information and unite; the time for cooperation and alliances has come.