News Agency TASR is Setting Trends

The news agency TASR became a public service institution as of the beginning of this year. What changes has this transformation brought along with it in relation to customers and the general public?
- The news agency, of course, acquired not only a more independent legal status, including also more powers for the administration of assets and conducting business, but the agency now also provides public service information to the general public, free of charge. That is why we created a Zone of Public Interest on our Internet page, where such information is released online regularly. The free of charge public service information, which our new agency provides, also features photos, information searches and other recordings, which are destined for scientific and study purposes, which means in other words not for commercial use.  Apart from this, the TASR web portal offers the public updated information and benefits, which are available daily, as for example a new topic prepared in an interesting journalistic way along with the summary of the latest news from all areas. The Internet assists TASR in gradually becoming a modern end-user medium of excellent quality, whereas the changes and improvements related to TASR web have not yet been finished yet.

TASR has gone full steam ahead over the last period. You relocated your offices into a modern building and the name of your news agency is mentioned now more often than in the past.  What impact does this headway, however, have, on the company’s per­formance?
- If I could sum it up with only one word, I would say simply: effectiveness: If I should be more specific and present some figures, the first important measure that which was adopted was to cut the operating costs for the building, but also to reduce the staff from 254 to 156 employees. The ratio of journalists and service staff has been altered significantly. At present, out of 156 employees, 140 are journalists and 16 are employees, who are responsible for the operations of the agency. The number of senior positions has been halved. Moreover, we managed to decrease fluctuation by 66%, which is an incredible result for a news agency, because not only in Slovakia, but also in other countries, young journalists usually start their journalistic careers at a news agency, where they acquire the necessary work experience. However, TASR is proud of its team of journalists representing various generations. The news agency provides training not only to new staff but also to its employees, who have been working for TASR already for a longer time. An editor working for TASR should be able to work with different media. It is not enough if they can only write news stories. Each journalist has a notebook, camera and MP3 voice recorder and can bring forward not only a good text story but also sound recording and video from the events that they cover. 

ADVERTISING

Commercial customers are especially interested in the quality and speed of your service as well as the new products. What products have been launched on the market over the last two years?
- In the first year, we tried to pinpoint products that posted losses for the agency, and we decided not to provide them anymore. Last year, we gradually launched new products. Our news agency started to bring comprehensive results of the lower football leagues, in a product called Football in a Nutshell, already on Sunday evening. In the last year prior to the euro changeover in Slovakia, the product called Euro Wallet was launched, wherein 10 news stories daily related to euro adoption were produced. Other new products included commercial products, such as the Music Calendar, Standard Slovak Language, or Beach Tabloid, which proved to be successful. We, as the first news agency in Slovakia, launched the Video Press system, which brings 20 of the latest online videos daily.
Videos are offered in 5 formats: AVI, MPEG, FLU, MP4 and 3GP for mobile phones at a resolution of 6:9, or 4:3. We realise that most of our customers, who purchase our video service, are providers of web pages and portals. That is why, as the first news agency on the market, we started not only offering our own brand player for the video service, but we also provide for the possibility to insert the video directly into the text of the web page. This year, three new products have been launched on the market so far. The export service was extended with news in the German language, the project of TASR public service has been implemented into schools, which are now free to use the public service news for educational purposes, during lessons on media, or for example, during working on school magazines, in school radio or television broadcasting. The most important and the latest product is, however – tasr.business.

The product tasr.business has been advertised as a system that offers online news based on a customer’s own selection criteria. Customers can order the product for a trial period. How does the tasr.business work and who can benefit from this product?
- TASR BUSINESS is the fastest selective access to information in Slovakia at present. It offers   something for everyone. It can be perceived as an end-user product of TASR – as a newspaper, whose contents can be defined by every customer prior to the product’s release on the Internet or in other media. Moreover, from a technological point of view it is a revolutionary system on the Slovak market. The application tasr.business is based on a super modern platform ADOBE AIR. The platform processes the latest news directly from the TASR editorial services every 5 minutes. The application has two versions: tasr.business pro and tasr business free. The version free can be downloaded, free of charge, by anyone who is interested. TASR reacts thus in a flexible way to the requirements of the general public and provides the latest information for all those who show interest and download the applications. The public has thus access to all the news from the TASR services, which we consider to be a radical change in the segment of services for the public. Everyone can choose those categories that they are interested in or they can browse through all of the categories. This service also includes the comprehensive daily offer of TASR video news. If we take into consideration that TASR released its picture databases on the Internet, we too can state that TASR services are as open to the general public as they have ever been and that they offer the fastest and latest news for the public. The application TASR business free contains headlines and short summaries of the text news; the version „pro“ for professionals provides access to the full versions of the news. Its major asset is the fact that it does not “annoy” the recipient with information, which is not of priority to them, and brings them only the essential latest information, which may change their world and business. The application is ideal for large companies, which seek to provide information for a wider circle of middle management, for example banks or ministries. This means for those people who are not from the press departments, who do not work with or process the information, but would like to be up-to-date with the latest events. The product can also be offered at a good price for companies, which need to be informed only about specific segments, for example about an economic crisis or the automotive industry. The product has significant benefits also for small companies, which are only interested in specific information from one area. Another advantage of both versions of TASR business is its benefits – video service TASR with the latest video news, 38 various categories, weather forecast with a possibility to choose a location and a calculator of the exchange rates. The platform, which is a basis for the product tasr.business, ADOBE AIR, is a state-of-the-art application, which is used by such companies as eBay, FedEx, NASDAQ, FOX NEWS RADIO, AOL – America Online, which is one of the largest US providers of Internet access. This application is used with the product tasr.business for the first time in Slovakia in the public sector, and to 99% in the Slovak commercial sector. That is why we can proudly state that TASR sets trends in technologies that are used in news agencies throughout Slovakia.

What feedback have you received from your customers regarding your changing your editiorial systems?
- Excellent. Already at the end of last year we installed the most advanced searching and distribution system, Autonomy, which simplified the distribution of information and is a system for searching for news, which is really rather easy and beneficial for our customers. This year we also plan to convert photos and video to this system. All of our services will thus be of a multimedia nature and will be easy to combine. I think that I can state proudly that The News Agency of the Slovak Republic is today completely different from what it used to be in the times prior to the current management. After years of decline, TASR does not have any debt, quite on the contrary. We achieved a balanced performance and our own revenues are on the rise. This is thanks to the fact that we managed to stabilise a team of experts, we offer independent and reliable news coverage, we lead in transparent communication, we produce not only fast but also intelligent information, which we in turn broadcast with the help of state-of-the-art technologies. Also thanks to this, we managed to regain the trust of our customers, which in turn motivates us on the one hand, but on the other hand as a leader on the market of news coverage that is provided by news agencies, it is a commitment made to our customers, the general public, as well as ourselves. 

More info: www.tasr.sk

Photo: TASR

Audio/Video

Photogallery