Anadolu Agency renews deal with Greek news agency

By Furkan Naci Top and Kubra Chohan

THESSALONIKI, Greece / ANKARA (AA) – Anadolu Agency on Saturday renewed its cooperation agreement with Greece's Athens-Macedonian News Agency (ANA-MPA).

The signing ceremony came during the general assembly of the Association of the Balkan News Agencies - Southeast Europe (ABNA-SE) hosted by the ANA-MPA in the Greek city of Thessaloniki.

In his remarks at the meeting, Anadolu Agency Deputy Director General Mustafa Ozkaya stressed the importance of digital innovation for news agency journalism.

“As an international news agency, Anadolu Agency has launched and established many services and applications to cope with the demands of new media landscape”, he said.

“Anadolu Agency is the second most followed news agency in Instagram with 325,000 followers. In 2014 AA had only 1,5 million views in its YouTube channel which has reached a total number of 40 million in 2017.

"Anadolu Agency Twitter followers has increased to a number of 1,530,000 in 2017 which was 271,000 followers in 2014. Anadolu Agency mobile applications are downloaded by over 800,000 users,” he added.

Ozkaya mentioned that Anadolu Agency currently produces editorial info graphics in 11 languages, and the number will rise to 13 with the addition of Spanish and Indonesian.

The cooperation agreement was signed between and ANA-MPA General Director Mihalis Psilos, which would include exchange of news, photos, and videos.

The agreement also says ANA-MPA will benefit from Anadolu Agency’s war journalism program.

Representatives of ATA of Albania, BTA of Bulgaria, KNA of the Greek Cypriot administration, Agerpres of Romania, MIA of Macedonia, FENA of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Tanjug of Serbia were also among the participants of the general assembly meeting.