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Продуктовый подход в работе информационного агентства: опыт медиагруппы «Россия сегодня»
The authors present a joint research on the specifics of editorial management of a news agency in the context of digitalization and the ongoing media convergence. In particular, they examine the particular characteristics of the product and product portfolio of the media. The direct practical part is the examination of the product line of a news agency, as well as an empirical study on the aspects of modern editorial management in relation to the formation of this line. The work was carried out as part of a comprehensive study of the hybridization of business processes of Russian news agencies in the context of media convergence. The leading hypothesis in this material is the assertion that a news agency, which previously existed as a special, infrastructural media, has turned into an entire media “combine” that works for absolutely different audience segments, which allows the agency to compete with other media. In addition, this transformation leads to completely new managerial practices – in addition to news production, managers produce non-news content, experiment with virtual reality, and enter other content promotion platforms. The academic novelty of the material lies in the examination of the formation of the product portfolio through the focus on managerial practices. It is worth pointing out that there are almost no works in the domestic scientific discourse, which would deal specifically with the product approach in the organization of news agencies’ functioning. The key works for forming the theoretical background were the works of Henry Jenkins, Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Terhi Rantanen, Elena Vartanova, Evgeniy Prokhorov, Anna Kachkaeva, Georgiy Viren, Tatyana Frolova, Vasiliy Polynov. The authors divided the theoretical foundation into three subgroups – media convergence, media management, and the functioning of news agencies. Among the methods used were observation, open data analysis, reflexive thematic analysis, in-depth interviews, and generalization. The article presents the authors’ definition of the “product of a news agency”, a direct review of the product portfolio of the Rossiya Segodnya media group, as well as the results of in-depth interviews, which were conducted with former and current managers of this media group. The results of the empirical study were divided into the following categories: “Organization of the production of news content”, “Organization of the production of multimedia special projects”, “Managing the editorial staff”, “Organization of content distribution”, “Organization of the back office in terms of IT”. The authors also tried to summarize management practices, as well as to form a small recommendation base for further development of the agency’s products in the digital environment.