From the Newsroom*
São Paulo – Two Brazil-Arab News Agency (ANBA) articles have been shortlisted for the Massey Ferguson Journalism Award. Article "Cattle beef from Rio Grande do Sul to have certificate of origin", by the executive editor at ANBA, Alexandre Rocha, and "The race for the perfect chicken", by senior editor Isaura Daniel, were shortlisted in the Internet category. Apart from the two articles, the other finalist is article "Research at ESALQ suggests alternative to minimize the effects of deforestation", by journalist Olavo Soares do Nascimento, published on USP Online agency. The announcement of the finalists was made yesterday (1) at Agrishow Ribeirão Preto and the name of the winner will be announced at the end of the month of June, at a ceremony in Porto Alegre, where the Massey Ferguson head offices are located.
The award selects the best articles in the country in the area of agribusiness. Apart from the Internet category, the award is also given to television and radio news, newspaper and magazine articles and photographs published in the press. Three finalists have been chosen in each category. According to a spokesperson for Massey Ferguson, this edition of the award, the sixth, received 148 article submissions from the Brazilian states of São Paulo, Rio Grande do Sul, Paraná, Bahia, Pernambuco, Pará, Santa Catarina, Rio de Janeiro, Ceará, Minas Gerais, Goiás, Mato Grosso, the Federal District, Rio Grande do Norte and Amazonas.
"The fact that ANBA has had two articles shortlisted is already an award, showing that the team works with great effort and is engaged in the ANBA and Chamber objectives," stated Antonio Sarkis Jr., president at the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce, which owns the Brazil-Arab News Agency (ANBA). The ANBA objective is to promote knowledge about Brazil in the Arab world and vice versa. Sarkis recalls that the articles that are finalists focus on agribusiness, the Brazilian sector that is the leader among exports to the 22 countries in the League of Arab States.
This is the second time that ANBA is a finalist for the Massey Ferguson award. In the last edition, article "Flowers generate dream harvest in northeastern Brazil", by journalist Geovana Pagel, was one of the finalists. The agency has already won four journalism awards since it was established, in September 2003. Two of the awards were by the National Confederation of Transport (CNT), in 2004 and 2005, one by the National Association of Railway Transport (ANTF) and another by the Brazilian Machinery Manufacturers Association (Abimaq), the two latter in 2006.
ANBA also had a record number of visits in the month of April, when the site received 201,371 visits. The figure is greater than the 199,723 registered in the previous month, March. At the beginning of the year, in January, the number of visits was 157,587. In the first four months of this year, the total number of visits has already reached 698,711. In the whole of last year, the number of visitors reached 1.7 million. In 2005, a total of 676,000 visitors entered the site. That is, the number of visitors to the ANBA site has already exceeded three million since it was established. "The growth tendency or recent years is continuing, which shows that ANBA is on the right route," said Sarkis.
The work developed by the Brazil-Arab News Agency is coordinated by Meios agency, which belongs to journalist Joel Santos Guimarães. ANBA has versions in English and Portuguese and is visited by people in Brazil and abroad. The agency has content exchange agreements with six Arab news agencies, in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Algeria, Yemen, Syria and Tunisia. In Brazil, the agency has similar agreements with state-owned news agency Radiobrás and with the Federation of Industries of the State of Paraná (Fiep).
*Translated by Mark Ament
