28
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ISSUE 2 2015
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THE CHANNEL
including
The Guardian
and Reuters
to offer an industry-leading
solution. Another sign of the
importance of strong partnerships.
FOSTERINGNEWTALENT
Enhancing and growing relevance
can’t just be about teaching old
dogs new tricks. We also need to
invest and attract new talent.
Incumbent news organisations
need new talent to ensure their
futures. The first question in a job
interview at a news publisher will
go from “What have you learned?”
to “What can you bring us?”.
Asking a candidate “Who is your
personal audience?” can attract the
type of talent which will also bring
new audiences to our brands.
From people operating in
traditional media to bloggers and
those publishing straight to social
platforms such as Snapchat and
Instagram – we are committed to
recognising new talent. To date,
over 900 correspondents,
assignment editors, producers,
anchors and managers from more
than 300 news organisations in
nearly 140 countries have taken
part in the CNN Journalism
Fellowship and leadership
programmes. These journalists
come to Atlanta, share knowledge,
and move on to positions of
leadership in our industry.
LAUNCHING TOGETHER
It’s not just new talent that we can
help develop – established news
organisations can be instrumental
in launching new linear and digital
news services. Just take the last
year, for instance, where my team
has been at the front end of some
major launches around the world.
We worked closely with N1, our
exclusive news channel affiliate in
the Adria region, to launch TV and
digital news services in Croatia,
Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. We
were involved with everything
from training and consultancy to
developing the newsroom
operations to agreeing what CNN
content and programmes could be
integrated into N1’s schedule. The
channel has been a big success and
has broken some great stories over
the last year.
Our relationships with Nine
Media Corporation and Trans Corp
also saw landmark launches in the
last year in the Philippines and
Indonesia respectively. As with the
N1 launch, we worked closely with
valued partners to establish
compelling news offering that
combines local news with a global
perspective. The CNN brand is
helping power these offerings in
innovative ways across platforms –
and so CNN Philippines and CNN
Indonesia were born. We are now
extending this type of collaboration
into the digital space with the
launch of CNN.gr – a Greek-
language digital news service in
partnership with DPG Digital
Media. I predict exciting times
ahead as we take the CNN brand to
more audiences, across devices,
through innovative partnerships
around the world.
THE FUTURE
Our industry is experiencing huge
disruptive change every day. But we
have a choice – we can choose to be
relevant, to be part of the disruption,
or to allow ourselves to be disrupted,
and fade into irrelevance.
What fills me with optimism is
that our industry has always
innovated – from pen, to printing
press, to radio to television – the
history of CNN International and
of our industry is innovation. Now
is the time to be fast, to really listen
to audiences, to learn to fail, and
ultimately learn to win.
As CNN International marks 30
years of news, I retain a genuine
optimism at the path that we, and
our 1,100 partners, are taking to
remain relevant and indispensable,
for future generations.
n
“
We have
the choice
to be part
of the
disruption
”
t
t
Top left
Christiane
Amanpour
reporting from
Afghanistan;
top
right
Arwa
Damon reporting
in Tahir Square
GregBeitchman
