Peter Kropsch Named New President of the European News Agencies
Peter Kropsch, CEO of the Austria Press Agency (APA), has been named the new president of the European News Agencies Association (EANA). He succeeds Mika Pettersson of the Finnish news agency STT.
At Friday’s General Assembly in Lisbon, the Andorran news agency ANA and the Georgian agency GHN were also admitted to the EANA. It now comprises 32 news agencies from an equal number of countries, including SDA, DPA (Germany), AFP (France), ANSA (Italy), and ITAR-TASS (Russia). In addition to the new president, Peter Kropsch, Jiri Majstr of the Czech agency CTK and George Penintaex, CEO of the Cypriot agency CNA, were newly elected to the board. Clive Marshall of the British agency PA rounds out the board.
New business models
At the fall conference, agency executives addressed the challenges facing news agencies in the changing media landscape and discussed new business models. The trend across Europe—where the use of print products is declining while that of digital media via mobile or online platforms is steadily increasing—offers new opportunities for news agencies. However, they are simultaneously facing significant cost pressures, which makes developing new products quite challenging. New partnership models with clients and multimedia offerings that can be used across all media platforms are becoming increasingly important. With their standards and efficient processes, news agencies can continue to be indispensable partners for clients both large and small. (sda)
