News Agencies in the Turbulent Era of the Internet. Oliver Boyd-Barrett, ed. Barcelona, Spain: Government of Catalonia, Presidential Department, 2010. 313 pp.
This valuable anthology combines the work of nineteen authors who describe the state of world and national news agencies around the world. The volume is the fifth in the Catalan government’s Col-lecció Lexikon series of studies on different aspects of journalism. Three have appeared in the Catalan language, while this and one other on European press subsidies have been published in English. Though not stated specifically, the book appears to have been issued in celebration of the tenth anniversary (in 2009) of the formation of the Catalan News Agency (ACN), one of the few new European news agencies formed in recent years.
The collective theme of these papers is how the changes increasingly impacting newspapers and electronic media clients of news agencies are forcing the latter to consider and develop services directly aimed at end users. The editor, who has taught at Bowling Green State University in Ohio since 2005, has been a long-time student of global news agencies (see, for example, The International News Agencies [1980], and The Globalization of News [1999], both from Sage).
After an introduction focusing upon changes in news agencies over the past decade, the chapters examine a literal world of existing news agencies and the pressures they face. Papers examine the innovative technology model of the ACN, Agence France Presse in both French and global contexts, possible strategies for news agencies in Italy, the agencies of Australia and New Zealand, news agencies across Canada, DPA and other agencies in Germany, and the role of agencies based on the experience of EFE (the Spanish news agency) in Latin America. Other chapters look at the Inter Press Service as an alternative approach focusing on news of the developing world, the Portuguese agency LUSA, the move to online service and the U.K.’s domestic Press Association, the trials and tribulations of the four domestic Indian news services, changing news agencies in Russia, and the operations of the Xinhua news agency in China.
This is a handsomely produced paperback volume, with two-color printing, dividers between papers, footnotes in page margins (so much better than the usual back-of-the-book location), graphs and tables, and documentation. The only thing it lacks is an index, which would have made it far easier to reference. Still, the papers provide a valuable and current assessment of the status of selected national and global agencies amidst dramatic technical and economic upheaval in the international news business.
CHRISTOPHER H. STERLING
George Washington University