News agency supports almost 40 stations

As an independently owned agency, it supplies ready-to-read radio news bulletins, with sound bites, to 37 commercial and community radio stations in South Africa and one in Namibia.

Founder and managing editor Henning Coetzee says client stations retain their independence. News editors are encouraged to adapt its bulletins to suit their stations' needs or to pick out stories and sound bites that will appeal to their audience.

He adds that where many newsrooms have characteristically become denuded of experienced journalists, it has managed to retain a core of three experienced radio journalists, who have been with the agency since its inception. It has also provided training to news staff at community radio stations.

In the US and UK, most radio stations use a combination of their own news staff and an independent news agency that specialises in radio news. The agency was developed as a local version of those agencies.

For more, go to www.newsflash.co.za.