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Diversity of Journalisms. Proceedings of ECREA/CICOM Conference, Pamplona, 4-5 July 2011 Updating a Traditional Role? The AFP News Agency Confronted by the Diversity of Challenges in the Digital Era Jérémie Nicey University of Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris III, France Abstract International news agencies are traditionnaly considered – with truth – as providers of information to diverse media customers. With AP and Reuters, the Agence France- Presse (AFP) is one of the three major agencies; and it is the oldest. For centuries, AFP (1944-.) and its French predecessors have adapted to media and societal change; they have participated in the shaping of some of those changes in information/news flows. Yet, AFP has had a specific role to play, because located at beginning of the news flow in France: collecting news then used by other more visible, up-front media — newspapers and mainstream media— print and broadcast. In the Internet era, does this specific role continue? What are the strategies of AFP towards recent and major online ‘actors’, such as Google or Twitter, and towards amateur practices (such as the agency Citizenside)? Is AFP hesitant towards web transformations and the advent of ‘competitors’ of a new kind, or is it continually adapting to such changes? How does it respond to the requirements of both its usual customers and the more informed community accessing information from a whole new range of suppliers and outlets accessible in the Internet age? This article examines the changes in journalism routines, the adaptation of AFP to web transformations and the options to be taken by the agency to strengthen its branding in online competition. Keywords: Agence France-Presse, news reporting, news flows, journalism routines, Five Stages of Grief, Citizenside, reputation. For over a hundred and fifty years, news agencies were the main ‘actors’ in the flows of international information. The Agence France-Presse (AFP) dates its origins back to 1835, when Charles-Louis Havas founded his agency: Agence Havas. The agency soon faced rivals in Europe (Wolff was launched in Berlin in 1849, and Reuters in London in 1851), and later on a global level (notably with Associated Press, AP, founded in New York in 1848). Yet, AFP is not only the ‘oldest’ agency: even today, it remains one of the three major world news agencies – Wolff, as well as UPI, another US-based agency, have disappeared. By their position at the beginning of the news chain, such agencies have had a – if not the most – decisive role to play in defining the news agenda. A proof of it can be found in the critiques of their role, during the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) debates, in the 1970s: the UNESCO MacBride Commission highlighted the fact that the selection of geographic areas and topics in news reporting reflected the priorities of news agencies, alleged to control 80% of the international 254
Diversity of Journalisms. Proceedings of ECREA/CICOM Conference, Pamplona, 4-5 July 2011 news flow. Their role in their collection and provision of news was thus underlined. Until recently, their customers, professional media as well as private or public entities, payed great attention to their services, because such services were unique; no other major purveyor of international news could compete. In the context of increasingly diverse journalism and news-sources and services, do news agencies still have such a central role to play? In a world dominated by the Internet and by online practices – at various layers of society – does the Agence France-Presse still occupy its traditional central role? This article aims to answer such questions, by observing ways in which Internet has modified the routines of professional journalists; it examines recent strategies of AFP in adapting to the Internet era, and analyses why and how news agencies may rely on their own strengths in facing online competition. Changing journalism routines and practices In some aspects, the time when the news agencies were the first and main link in the chain of manufactured news (Fishman, 1980), seems to lie in the remote past. Traditional practices gave international news agencies, including Agence France- Presse, the role of collecting news for other more visible, up-front media players —first and foremost, newspapers and mainstream print and broadcast media. They were the main ‘fountain of information’. This classic journalism ‘circuit’ has been more and more threatened in the past forty years. Change began when public administrations and private corporations enhanced their communication by making spokesmen send direct messages to the press – therefore bypassing news agencies. But the main main novel and fundamental structural change confronting news agencies is more recent: after a century and a half of of profiting from their technologically advanced networks, AFP, Reuters and AP have had to face the arrival of Internet. At the outset, in the beginning of the 1990s, news agencies positions appeared little affected; but soon, they had to suffer the combined advent of the Internet and of changing user-practice changed routines —especially journalism routines, which is our focus here. In 2002, Oliver Boyd- Barrett and Terhi Rantanen pointed out one – if not the main – effect of Internet on news agencies: « One impact of the Internet is a further blurring of the line between traditional ‘wholesaler’ and ‘retailer’ roles of news agencies and their media clients, respectively. […] Until recently, news agencies did not have a direct access to an audience consisting of individuals ; their services were mediated through their subscribers. This classic definition fo news agencies still holds true in good measure, but now needs to be extended and recontextualized. In addition to their traditional ‘wholesale’ role, news agencies have become increasingly important as ‘retail’ sources of information not only for media but also for individual citizens. […] However, even on the Internet, clients typically access news agency news through secondary or ‘retail’ agents consisting of general interest (e.g. Yahoo!) and corporate websites, the websites of newspaper and television stations, or through Internet portals such as Netscape » (Boyd-Barrett, Rantanen, 2002, 57-58). 255
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