Adonis Diaries

CNNWire-Al Jazeera collaboration: A proposal (January 20, 2009)

            The Associated Press (AP) is a “non lucrative” cooperative managed by 1,400 dailies with the business of acquiring and disseminating news to the affiliated dailies; it hires over 3,000 journalists spread in over 100 States and sells news at a price; it has lately reduced its price rate for two major reasons.  First, the written news business is suffering from a constant reduction in readers; many major dailies have folded (like the Christian Science Monitor) and a few are resuming publishing via internet websites.  The second reason is the coming competition from CNNWire services.

            CNNWire is contemplating to diversify in this line of business and selling news to dailies; it did not renew its contract with Reuters as a first step in reducing its dependence on external medias.  CNN has been making profit over 10% for the last 5 years and has money to invest.  CNN has started as a television chain and then acquired many radio groups and internet sites and spreading its tentacles; CNN is already negotiating with several dailies desirous to cover major events.  CNN and has hired 3,000 journalists around the world and is focusing to expand greatly its Abu Dhabi bureau.

            Al Jazeera is the CNN counterpart for the Arab and Moslem World. It has covered the horrors in Gaza far better than CNN could around the clock.  Israel has denied access to Gaza for journalists and cable operators and reporters.

            My general proposal is that CNN and Al Jazeera link up to offer wire services to dailies and videos to cables.  There are thousands of graduates in audio-visual, graphic designer, typesetting, computer display and pagination, and internet navigators that can satisfy the requisite of wire service business after attending seminars and focused special classes.

            To be more specific, I contemplate teams of three employees combining the needed specialties in every small district to covering world news in the written and audio-visual mediums.  These teams of three or four can work at their homes and coordinate their efforts by meeting at locations with more sophisticated equipments.  A professional writer can head the team and be the secretary for coordinating the incoming and outgoing tasks, and thus saving headquarters hundreds of micro managers and secretaries with higher quality in precision and news display.