With more than 1,300 partners of printed and audiovisual media, the Inter-American Press Association is the largest and most important areopagus that journalism in the Americas counts on to defend and protect the freedom of speech from the many dangers that are constantly lurking.
In 75 years of existence, which will be celebrated in October, IAPA has also gone beyond its role as a shield of that freedom and has become the most active source from which guides emanate to face the future of such media, especially through this era of technological innovations that lead to a new model digital model.
IAPA has not feared the challenge of transformation. On the contrary, it has been laying the programmatic foundations to assume a modern multimedia journalism that helps traditional media to survive in this context, and for such purposes it has assumed the Declaration of Salta (Argentina) as a letter of principles for the exercise of press freedom in the digital sphere.
With an eye on the future, the IAPA has been preparing its members to adopt the necessary changes that the new business model warrants and that’s why it’s usual to hear in their meetings, every six months, both at the General Assembly and the SIP-Connect technological conferences, very in-depth discussions about the challenges of the present and the future.
Through the Virtual Learning Institute, IAPA continuously offers courses that provide information and techniques for the management of new technologies, such as the design and adoption of strategies for a better use of podcasts, the control and filter of false news, the use of storytellings to tell news stories through audio and video, among other modern considerations.
Likewise, it offers lessons on the management of the data provided by audiences, efficient marketing that explains the best ways to monetize each piece of content offered to the users, and the editing of videos on smartphones and new tools that make up the today’s-era newsrooms, where the teams of the printed and digital editions work together.
This week the fifth annual SIP-Connect conference was held in Miami in which more than 200 publishers and media executives from Latin America discussed how to achieve the best printed newspaper model in this digital era, which are the innovations that are about to impact that model, which are the alternative businesses that originate from such changes and how to address this transition without losing the essence of a serious and responsible journalism exercise, committed to the validity of democracy and human freedom.
– Translated from Spanish by Randy Rodriguez.
Director's Thoughts 