Newspusher is a video news on-demand service run by parent company Akamedia, founded in 2003.
The Paris-based privately owned company received US $2 million in Series A funding in March 2008. IJNet talked to Lionel Faucher, Akamedia founder and CEO about what content media outlets buy most from Newspusher and about its international expansion plans.
IJNet: How many users are signed up?
Lionel Faucher: We have about 200 active sources registered, from freelancers pushing their new stories to major news organizations like Fox News Edge (which supplies the Fox News Channel and Fox affiliates) and Russia Today, plus photo agencies that also use video now (Splash News, Sipa), news agencies with multimedia departments (Belga, PressAssociation), NGOs (The Red Cross, Greenpeace...) and IGOs (UNHCR, The European Commission).
We receive about 500 new stories per day and provide over 300,000 stories available online.
IJNet: Who is your service targeted to?
LF: We work for more than 100 media clients, mainly in Europe. Half our revenue comes from TV clients who buy material that they edit for their news programs; 40% comes from new media clients, for websites or mobile apps -- most of them buy ready-to-use stories. The remaining 10% comes from educational, in-flight and other platforms.
IJNet: Where have you placed news stories?
LF: CNN, CBS in the U.S., France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Benelux, Fuji Television and Tokyo Broadcasting System in Japan, the main Telcos and main portals in Europe as well as websites of many magazines and newspapers.
IJNet: What stories are you most interested in now?
LF: We’re very good at selling entertainment stories, so we always looking for that genre. In the last few months, we’ve been working to gather as many stories and points of view on the Middle East and Africa where we believe that what happens there has some traction in newsrooms and that will increase in international media if we constantly and consistently bring video coverage.
IJNet: What are the advantages for freelancers, given the 40% cut you take?
LF: Freelancers, as well as all the sources working for us, keep control of their stories. They keep the copyright and license their stories for limited use. They can keep on working with their regular clients even using Newspusher to deliver them and make their stories available to the other ones with the restrictions and embargoes that they would like to apply to all or some of their stories.
IJNet: Do you accept cell phone videos?
LF: We do accept any video that is newsworthy as long as it comes from a professional source. We do not accept so-called user generated content, since we are not able to verify and assure the copyright. We do, however, work with partners who focus on clearing/curating UGC and citizen stories.
IJNet: The site interface is offered in different languages, do you support languages other than English in videos?
LF: Like most video news providers, we carry raw footage, short news packages, longer news reports and daily news flashes in different genres...
We always try to have an international version of the story so that all newsrooms can understand what the story is about -- a story in Iraq with French voice-over is impossible to show to a Japanese TV station since nobody speaks French there. However, we accept videos in all languages with a script [that has] at least a short description in English, so clients understand what it’s about and they can search and find it.
You can find out more about Newspusher from the company website or Twitter account.