Moscow, September 23(AZERTAC). The 15th General Assembly of the Organization of the Asia-Pacific News Agencies (OANA) took place in Moscow on September 19. 

The meeting, organized by the Russian Itar-Tass agency, was attended by heads of leading news agencies from the Asia and Pacific region. Azerbaijan was represented by AZERTAC and Trend news agencies.

Opening the event, chairman of the ITAR-TASS Board, OANA Vice-President Vitaly Ignatenko said that the Moscow meeting brought together 44 news agencies from 35 countries.

Itar-Tass Director General Sergei Mikhailov read out Russian President Vladimir Putin`s message to the participants. The message says that the organization helps to ensure free and direct news exchange in the Asia and Pacific region. According to the Russian President, the technical and creative cooperation is instrumental in ensuring balanced approach to covering complicated problems.

The opening ceremony also saw a message of the Chairman of the Russian state Duma Sergey Narishkin.

In his remarks, Director General of the Anadolu agency, OANA President Kamal Ozturk underlined that the General Assembly was a good platform for discussing a variety of problems existing in the Asia and Pacific region. The major aim of the organization is to ensure free flow of information among the countries of the region.

Ozturk pointed out that İtar-Tass will take over OANA presidency in 2013-2016.

“I am sure that Itar-Tass presidency will bring more successes,” he said.

Itar-Tass Director General Sergei Mikhailov was elected as the OANA President for the next three years and his deputy Mikhail Gusman as the secretary general.

Then, OANA board members voted for increasing the number of members from 11 to 13. AZERTAC Director General Aslan Aslanov was elected as the organization`s vice-president. The number of OANA technical committee members was also increased from 5 to 7. The OANA Executive Board meeting will be held in Bahrain. The meeting will be organized by Bahrain`s BNA news agency.

Country reports of Kyodo, Xinhua, AAP, Antara, Yonhap and other agencies were heard at the General Assembly. The reports touched upon problems of journalism, usage of news materials in education programs.

The participants heard the report by OANA board member, new Vice-President, AZERTAC Director General Aslan Aslanov.

“In the 21st century, the media are radically different from traditional journalism that we had at the beginning of our professional career. Today the number one task for news agencies is to introduce and then widely use advanced technologies, and to build cooperation with social networks, which became an integral part of our life. At the same time, news agencies must preserve their role of main information suppliers and survive in stiff competition on the market.

The world is now witnessing the emergence of a new form of building relationship with the audience, which is called TRANSMEDIA. Transmedia is both a creative technique for story extension and a marketing tool to reach a broader, more diversified, audience. Transmedia is stories told across multiple media platforms often involving real life or tangible elements, and typically also involving participation by the audience. You need to find out what your audience wants, whether there is the need to include some game mechanisms in your transmedia project, and if yes, what technologies this will require,” he said.

Aslanov said we must use most effective mechanisms. To expand the audience people should first find out what they need. And then there is the need to properly market it with the aim of not only getting revenues, but also building new relations and attracting business partners. Being one of the most popular media platforms, YouTube, for example, can be used to monetize your content and promote it on an international market.

Audience has dramatically changed in our times. Television audience is decreasing in developed countries. We are now at the peak before the collapse. More and more people are using online services to watch video content. The Internet television audience is forecast to grow. However, it`s still too early to dismiss the role of television, because the number of television audience is two-fold bigger than that of the Internet users during prime time. However, there are no doubts that mobile platforms and TV will merge some day. So transmedia means that you`re not just thinking about one platform, but are considering how your audience can have various points of contact with your characters.

“I would like to express my hope that this topic will be of interest to our partners in OANA. We can develop joint transmedia projects, carry out experience exchange, and organize joint workshops. We must seek ways of more effectively using the potential of OANA, particularly, we can use OANA`s website as an information bridge that will help us distribute multimedia material of the member agencies to a broader audience. We can create a corporate news blog on OANA`s webpage, which will highlight the member agencies` latest news and technological innovations,” Aslanov said.

Then, the secret ballot revealed Baku as the host city for the 16th OANA General Assembly. AZERTAC will preside at OANA in 2016-2019.