The official Ethiopian News Agency (ENA), the oldest wire service on the African continent, has called for further media convergence to tackle challenges from internet- and web-based new media.
"Like every industry, the traditional media industry is plagued with challenges. One of the main challenges for the traditional media industry has been the emergence of new media," ENA Director Gebremichael Gebremariam Melles said in a interview with Xinhua ahead of the World Media Summit being held in Beijing on October 8-10.
Under the theme "Cooperation, Action, Win-Win and Development," heads of media organizations around the world analyze the current situation, assess the development trends of the global media industry on a series of crucial issues confronting media organizations against the backdrop of the international financial crisis, fast changing audience demands and the rapid advancement of emerging technologies.
"With young people spending more and more of their time online, it is clear that the traditional media are losing their audience's attention to online content providers and social networks," said Gebremichael.
"Young people visit Facebook or YouTube each week more than reading newspapers or watching TV. Although newspapers and TV still dominate young people's media use, their lead is quite narrow among younger generations," he said.
New media is a term meant to encompass the emergence of digital, computerized, or networked information and communications technologies in the later part of the 20th century.
"The era of Johannes Gutenberg (the first European to use movable type printing) is over. A new digital communications technology has emerged," he said, adding that digital technologies have fundamentally altered the traditional media landscape.
At present, digital delivery of in-depth, personalized information, including text, audio and video, to electronic devices began to supplant some of the roles of traditional media, said Gebremichael, also a well-known media researcher in Ethiopia.
"Even in Ethiopia, news for its text delivery is not that much valuable unless it is supported by audio-video. So, if the traditional media are to survive, changes have to happen," he said.
"Convergence is a key to the success of traditional media," he said.
The Ethiopian researcher defines media convergence as some form of cross-media cooperation, usually involving broadcast stations, print outlets and Internet sites.
"The traditional media should be powerful in online multimedia service delivery to survive in the digital age. The traditional media should seek to leverage their brands online, converting passive viewers or readers into engaged multichannel users."
"Media convergence mainly emerges in two ways," said Gebremichael. One has something to do with the convergence of actual industries, such as wire services, newspapers, magazines, radio and TV while the other is concerned with the convergence of voice,
video, and data within a common computing platform.
Like other wire services, ENA, set up in 1942, used to mainly supply text news to its subscribers.
But now the institution has unveiled ambitious plans to become a multimedia news agency, providing content for every information platform, including TV, Internet, broadband, newspapers and mobiles.
Gebremichael said his news agency will use the latest Internet technology to provide exclusive video, audio, text and picture content for all clients.
