Regional cooperation took centrestage as news agencies from around Asia-Pacific began their general assembly here today amidst challenges in the multimedia convergence era, Bernama reported. Opening the 13th Organisation of Asia-Pacific News Agencies (OANA) General Assembly, Indonesian Vice-President Jusuf Kalla called on its members to enhance their cooperation in reporting about the region to the world. He said this could be done by enhancing their understanding of each other's countries as outside news agencies may not have a proper perspective about them. OANA groups 41 agencies from 33 countries with two Iranian-based agencies accepted as new members at its executive board meeting yesterday. OANA President Datuk Azman Ujang said the board also decided that OANA should reach out to more countries in the Pacific Rim region to further expand its membership. "Yet another important decision is for training and capacity-building programmes for OANA media personnel in our efforts to enhance the quality and credibility of each and every member agency. "It is said that in the industry that we are all involved in, content is King and for content to be King, we all need to continuously upgrade and enhance our human resource especially for those in the forefront, the journalists," said Azman who is Bernama General Manager. Indonesian Antara News Agency chief executive officer Dr Ahmad Mukhlis Yusuf said the assembly would discuss how Information and Communications Technology (ICT) affected the media industry including news agencies. He said although some people may say news agencies are a dying species because of the Internet, it may not be so. "We do not see the Internet as a dagger pointed at news agencies. On the contrary, we are full of optimism about the role of news agencies in the new information age by strategizing the Internet as an enabler to leverage our roles in the media industry," he said. The highlight of the assembly will be the handing over of the presidency from Bernama to Antara and the election of the new executive board for the next three years.
