The Indian Leaders Program members were received by Rosario Pons, director of Graphics, which offered data about the company and accompanied them during the visit. EFE ranks fourth in the world ranking of news agencies and has a network of 3,000 professionals spread out in 120 countries.
In the presentation, apart from Pons, also participated Juan María Calvo, head of international relations and Sara Bhagchandani, from the sales department. Calvo wanted to emphasize that the agency is focusing on its process of internationalization, especially in South America, where 40% of the news published are distributed by EFE. Despite this international approach, the new strategy of the company is the segmentation of content, as Bhagchandani explained, "tailoring our services to each local client". Juan María Calvo explained the Indian colleagues one of the values of the agency "we come from a medium-sized country. We are not a superpower, so we haven´t got the viewpoint of a superpower. We try to show the world our perspective. "
EFE journalism maintains a strong commitment to fairness and ability to adapt to the times. Therefore, the agency is working to integrate its service with new mobile technologies. Pons also explained that there is a constant internal debate about "what is important and what is interesting" from the informative sense.
After the meeting, the leaders have done a tour through several areas of the agency, beginning with the television department. While there, an spontaneous debate has emerged on the evolution of the profession and the influence of social media in today's journalism. On this matter, one of the members of the Programme, Sonia Singh has stated that "now anyone with a mobile thinks is a journalist, without putting events into perspective or analyze the context."
The Indian journalists showed special interest in the international department,where they discovered EFE infrastructure in India. The agency has an office in New Delhi with a staff of three journalists who also covers information from neighboring countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Sri Lanka. According to Pons, these professionals are multidisciplinary and are responsible not only for writing, but also for registering the audiovisual information.
The leaders especially enjoyed the visit to the photo archive, where EFE has a set of 50 million images stored. Among the most recent pictures, the leaders could see the photos of their meeting with the Prince of Asturias celebrated the previous day. Some members of the Programme have been deeply interested in the conservation of older images, dating from the early twentieth century and which are kept in a separate section with special technical conditions. Currently, EFE is digitizing this sort of historical material with the aim of preserving it.
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