Interfax: The Technology of News now available to reading public

The an updated and expanded edition of Interfax: The Technology of News has become available to a broader range of readers, as the book can now be purchased in print and electronic form on marketplaces, at bookstores, electronic libraries and on the website of Alpina Publisher, one of Russia's leading publishers of business literature.

The Technology of News is a public version of the internal operating standards of Interfax, one of Russia's largest news agencies. The book explains in detail the general working principles of Interfax journalists, genres of news reporting, the rules for writing and verifying news, and technology for covering specific subjects and events in real time.

The book teaches how to gather information and correctly work with sources; recognize what is "news" and what is not; report on events first, in an accessible and interesting way; and not just tell readers about events, but also about their meaning and implications.

The new edition is twice the size of the first one, which was published in 2010, so it is able to cover new types of news, changes in the way journalists work amid the digital transformation and increased demands for fast reporting, accuracy and analyticity of newswires. The section of the book dealing with the legal risks of the profession is far more in-depth.

"They say that there are no strict rules in creative professions. Nonetheless, real-time news reporting is a create profession that is subject to rules. We are prepared to share our Information Standard with all who are interested. This is our contribution to the further development of a civilized news market," the preface to The Technology of News states.

The book will be useful to those who work with time-sensitive information, from journalism students to reporters and public relations professionals, as well as to anyone who wants to learn to write professional news articles that meet the best industry standard.

The Technology of News has been recommended by the Federal Education Methodological Association as a textbook for post-secondary students studying journalism and media communications.

Interfax began developing its rules and standards from its first days of reporting the news in 1989, when the agency's news stories differed radically from the Soviet journalistic norms accepted at the time. Interfax did not just follow the official line, it was the first to find out about important events and report the whole range of views on them, seeking to show the full picture, and to learn to speak in a language professionals could understand.

Interfax news reports became the best on the market, and the agency's rules and format became the industry standard.