Download the eBook (8.25 MB) - ECREA Thematic Sections

Diversity of Journalisms. Proceedings of ECREA/CICOM Conference, Pamplona, 4-5 July 2011
How AFP adapts to the web
In the Internet era, what are the strategies of Agence France-Presse? How have these
responded to recent major online actors, such as Google and Twitter? to the practices
of amateurs? Different stages or phases characterise AFP responses to the web.
International news agencies, as well as most traditional media professionals did not
expect their leading position to disappear. It took them time to realise how such a
technology would endanger their position and force them to transform practices and
strategies. This could be compared to the well-known Kübler-Ross model (1969): « The
Five Stages of Grief ». At first, at the turn of the cenury, AFP and others were ‘in
denial’: they strongly believed Internet in no way heralded the end of their ‘model’. In
France, similarly, the idea that Internet would endanger the French videotext or ‘Minitel’
was likewise hard to accept. Meanwhile, private telecommunication operators and the
State sought to equip the country with the news ‘state-of-the-art’ technology and to
reduce the cost of Internet access both for companies and for individual users.
Then in 2003-04, by the time France reached broadband access to Internet, managers
and journalists at Agence France-Presse felt hostile towards new key actors: this was
the stage of ‘anger’. One instance of this lied in heated discussions of copyright issues
and the measures the agency took against Google. Several articles and photos
produced by AFP were published in ‘Google News’ (launched in 2002, but the French
version ‘Google Actualités’ started in 2006). The agency accused the leading agregator
of copyright violation and started suing it in 2005, requiring $ 17.5 million in damages.
Obviously, the next step was the one of negotiation or, as Kübler-Ross writes,
‘bargaining’. In 2007, a final agreement was indeed signed, stating :
« AFP and Google have signed a licensing agreement that will enable the use of AFP’s
newswire content in innovative, new ways that will dramatically improve the way users
experience newswire content on the Internet. It will also help highlight original
journalism, giving credit to the newswire journalists who worked hard to break the news.
The new collaboration will ensure that AFP’s original journalism and breaking news are
easily discoverable on Google services and in particular on Google News. »
Nevertheless, this did not prevent the French agency from entering the Kübler-Ross
stage of ‘depression’ or, at least, as Michael Palmer (2009) puts it, of ‘self-doubt’. In
2007-09, AFP did not join in the first wave of social networks. It lost some customers
and it realised it suffered competition not only in the range of its geographic coverage
of news, but above all in the speed with which it transmitted news. Mobile telephonetransmission
and the development of modes of acces such as Twitter have overtaken
news agencies as the fastest providers of news, although the quality and reliability of
the content delivered by such actors can be questioned.
The final stage is the one the agency is presently in: ‘acceptance’. AFP is not hesitant
about the Internet any longer. And it has taken aboard the existence of competitors of a
new kind. The implementation of key decisions in this regard will take time to bear fruit.
The specific ‘semi-public’ status of the agency and the high costs involved complicate
matters.But AFP appears now to have developed the necessary Internet strategy.
Three examples suggest this. First is the major increase of multimodal content,
including video: in their study covering the period 2005-10, the Swedish researchers
Christer Clerwall and Michael Carlsson (2010) noted how similar strategies were
257