#WANIndia2009: Ria Novosti - 'Infographics give us a competitive edge'

With sites in 10 languages, Russian news agency Ria Novosti is competing for both international audiences and as a truly multimedia news source, its deputy general director says.

Valery Levchenko, who was speaking to Journalism.co.uk at last week's World Association of Newspapers (WAN) conference, says the agency's English-language site is the most popular of its foreign news destinations, which also cover Armenia, Azerbaijan, Moldova and Georgia through partnership deals.

"The idea [behind the English-language site] is that we see that there is demand for news and information on Russia and this demand is not unfortunately satisfied by the western or eastern media, by the media outside Russia, so that's why we try to compensate for that deficit and that's why we have our own English-language website," he says.

"The topics that we choose for the website fill in the gaps - they're not just translations of stories on the Russian-language site because in some cases we need to add some background so that a foreign audience can better understand the subject. In other cases we drop some details that are irrelevant to the readers outside of Russia."

The recently relaunched site is now centrally controlled as all foreign language desks have this year been integrated under a central manager in the Ria Novosti newsroom.

"We did that to better co-ordinate the editorial policies of individual desks, because unfortunately we used to have cases where major news on the English site went up at one time, on the Spanish site at another time and French website at a third time and also covered at different angles," says Levchenko.

"In a way we've adopted a 'your news' kind of model where we say these are the major topics and these are the angles. Then it's up to the editorial desk to decide if they will add some local information site which is relevant to their readers."

The new look English-language site has introduced a feature popular on many news sites: a 'most read/most commented on stories panel. But the agency must be careful not just to provide popular stories, says Levchenko, who says stories on arms, for example, perform particularly well on the site.

"It's not because our mission is to spread out military news, but it's just that the editor found that those stories get really picked up by the audience," he explains, adding that the site will expand to cover more stories on arts, entertainment, science, technology and judicial news – a particularly important topic for foreigners investing in Russia.

Ria Novosti is competing for international readers in a tough market, admits Levchenko: the agency is one of two state-owned news agencies in Russia, in addition to one private agency and the larger foreign agencies, such as Associated Press and Reuters, which have bureaux in the country and a large customer base.

But it is an often overlooked aspect of multimedia news coverage that Levchenko thinks will set Ria Novosti apart from its competitors and that's infographics.

A traditional form in some ways – using a map to illustrate a story is the simplest form – but also full of potential for news agencies, he says.

"Our infographics are focused on those issues that are important for Russia. AFP [Agence France-Presse] and Reuters may not always have the opportunity [to create them], because infographics is also quite time-consuming and resource-consuming in general," he says, adding that there is a separate channel on Ria's news sites for infographics.

"We see infographics as a standalone rather than embedded somewhere or always wrapped in text. As a story develops you develop the infographic too and in the end it develops on its own."

The agency has a visual department responsible for producing infographics, as well as video and images for its reporting. But Levchenko stresses the importance of knowing your organisation's strengths and limits.

Ria Novosti has an image archive of around 100,000 pictures - not as big as the AP's archive but sizeable for an agency of its stature and with a wealth of information on Russia.

But the agency won't always try to produce everything itself: for its coverage of the Beijing Olympics it needed infographics quickly and formed a partnership with German press agency, dpa.

Levchenko says: "In each given case we try to justify what we are doing - if you want to outsource it, why? Or if you want to do it yourself why do you think you'll do it better?"

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