First live services are already being launched in the run-up to the federal elections on October 20, 2019.

«Live services are being used more and more not only in Switzerland, but also internationally. Real-time services are also at the heart of our customers' editorial planning. It is a logical consequence that we are reacting to this with our services,» says Marcus Hebein, Head of the editors-in-chief of Keystone-SDA.

The video team will more and more focus on live streaming events, primarily media conferences. Keystone-SDA aims to offer live streams of several of the most important media conferences in the country each week. Events covered in the pilot phase included traditional media conferences and the climate strike with activist Greta Thunberg in Lausanne. The most popular event so far has been a very traditional sporting event: Almost ten thousand users followed the media conference with the new ‘Schwingerkönig’ (Swiss Wrestling King) Christian Stucki via Keystone-SDA live stream. The focus in the coming weeks will shift to the election campaign and the election day for the 2019 federal elections.

The live streams should achieve two goals : «The streams are technically very easy to embed in news sites, so our customers can quickly and easily offer their users high-quality live content,» says Adrian Reusser, Head of Video of the news agency. For topics with particularly high news value, selected soundbites or short video sequences are transmitted to customer as snippets while media conference is still going. «The focus is on speed and customer benefit. The excellent know-how of our team, perfect workflows and the optimal technical infrastructure are essential for being able to develop such services,» says Reusser, who has redesigned Keystone-SDA's video offers in recent months together with his team. 

The live streams are aimed at the core customer group of the news agency: the newsrooms throughout Switzerland. Thanks to the live streams editors can follow selected media conferences from their desks - or even via mobile applications if they are out of the office.

The second focus of the news agency's live efforts is the development of multimedia real-time services for the text wire. For several weeks already, the editorial team of Keystone-SDA has reported on selected events in live blogs in addition to the usual reporting in the basic service (‘Basisdienst’). In this new multimedia format, important events are covered almost in real-time. In addition to the agency’s own reporting live blogs feature social media content such as Tweets, Instagram or Facebook posts as complements.

«Live blogs are an essential step in the editorial development of the multimedia newsroom. All formats have to be integrated into one interface, and this absolutely promptly. The perfect cooperation of all departments - text, photo, video and infographics - is therefore a basic prerequisite for such services,» says Hebein.

 

 

So far, the focus of reporting has been on large events such as the «Fête des Vignerons» or sporting events such as the athletics meetings in Zurich and Lausanne, the E-Grand Prix in Berne and the «Eidgenössisches Schwingfest, ESAF» (Federal Swiss Wrestling) in Zug. In the upcoming weeks, an overview of what events will be covered with live blogs will be available to facilitate customer’s plannings. The basic service will gradually be supplemented with live coverage in the form of multimedia blogs for current breaking news and larger stories. 

As with live streams, live blogs also focus on customer benefits: The blogs can be embedded easily in customers’ websites. In addition, both live services are also an ideal instrument for journalists to gain an overview of the news situation within seconds - even on mobile applications.