The Jordan News Agency (In

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

: وكالة الأنباء الأردنية) (Shortly Petra) is the

news agency A news agency is an organization that gathers news reports and sells them to subscribing news organizations, such as newspapers, magazines and radio and television broadcasters. A news agency may also be referred to as a wire service, newswir ...

Jordan Jordan ( ar, الأردن; tr. ' ), officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,; tr. ' is a country in Western Asia. It is situated at the crossroads of Asia, Africa, and Europe, within the Levant region, on the East Bank of the Jordan Rive ...

History

Petra was established on 16th of July, 1969, as an independent body linked to the ministry of information. It became an independent entity in June 2004, following the dissolution of the ministry of information. A special ordinance was enacted to give PETRA financial and administrative independence and to specify the powers of the agency's board and those of the director general. The new ordinance grants the agency the right to sell some of its services to willing subscribers. The ordinance defines services that could be sold as: * Items in the photos, news and documents archives * Special news services requested by local and foreign organizations * Services of the T.V. unit and leasing its equipments * Professional, media press and technical training * Special news bulletin * Advertisement on its website

Services provided by the agency

* The daily newsletter in Arabic with an average of 100 news stories per day * The daily newsletter in English with an average of 35 news items per day * Photographs, an average of 25 photos per day * Training Center Services * TV Unit Services * News archive contains more than one million news * The digital photo archive contains 110,000 photos * SMS Service

Affiliation and correspondence

PETRA is an active member in the

Federation of Arab News Agencies The Federation of Arab News Agencies (FANA), a branch of the Arab League, is a membership organization for Arabic-language, national news agencies, currently of 18 or 19 members and established in 1975 in Beirut, Lebanon. Mission FANA's missi ...

(FANA), and the Non-Aligned Countries' News Agencies Pool. The agency has correspondents in

Cairo Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the Capital city, capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, List of ...

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...

Bonn The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ru ...

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

, Gaza, Ramallah, Abu Dhabi,

Doha Doha ( ar, الدوحة, ad-Dawḥa or ''ad-Dōḥa'') is the capital city and main financial hub of Qatar. Located on the Persian Gulf coast in the east of the country, north of Al Wakrah and south of Al Khor, it is home to most of the count ...

Bahrain Bahrain ( ; ; ar, البحرين, al-Bahrayn, locally ), officially the Kingdom of Bahrain, ' is an island country in Western Asia. It is situated on the Persian Gulf, and comprises a small archipelago made up of 50 natural islands and an ...

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 millio ...

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

Kuwait Kuwait (; ar, الكويت ', or ), officially the State of Kuwait ( ar, دولة الكويت '), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated in the northern edge of Eastern Arabia at the tip of the Persian Gulf, bordering Iraq to the nort ...

Kuala Lumpur , anthem = ''Maju dan Sejahtera'' , image_map = , map_caption = , pushpin_map = Malaysia#Southeast Asia#Asia , pushpin_map_caption = , coordinates = , sub ...

Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...

Sana'a Sanaa ( ar, صَنْعَاء, ' , Yemeni Arabic: ; Old South Arabian: 𐩮𐩬𐩲𐩥 ''Ṣnʿw''), also spelled Sana'a or Sana, is the capital and largest city in Yemen and the centre of Sanaa Governorate. The city is not part of the Gover ...

Bucharest Bucharest ( , ; ro, București ) is the capital and largest city of Romania, as well as its cultural, industrial, and financial centre. It is located in the southeast of the country, on the banks of the Dâmbovița River, less than north of ...

Baghdad Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon. I ...

Manama Manama ( ar, المنامة ', Bahrani pronunciation: ) is the capital and largest city of Bahrain, with an approximate population of 200,000 people as of 2020. Long an important trading center in the Persian Gulf, Manama is home to a very di ...

and

Beirut Beirut, french: Beyrouth is the capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, which makes it the third-largest city in the Levant region. The city is situated on a peninsula at the midpoint o ...

Technical development

Petra has come a long way since

news bulletins News broadcasting is the medium of broadcasting various news events and other information via television, radio, or the internet in the field of broadcast journalism. The content is usually either produced locally in a radio studio or televi ...

were distributed internally through systems that feed communication lines and the mechanical

Teleprinter A teleprinter (teletypewriter, teletype or TTY) is an electromechanical device that can be used to send and receive typed messages through various communications channels, in both point-to-point and point-to-multipoint configurations. Init ...

, that later changed to computer sets, PETRA has now fully computerized news services.Petra website
/ref> * In 1976, PETRA started to transmit news on VHF short waves to the

Arab world The Arab world ( ar, اَلْعَالَمُ الْعَرَبِيُّ '), formally the Arab homeland ( '), also known as the Arab nation ( '), the Arabsphere, or the Arab states, refers to a vast group of countries, mainly located in Western A ...

and Europe for 6 hours/day. * In 1992, PETRA computerized its press activities: reception and dispatching of news and archiving. * In 1994, PETRA developed its archive system by using an Oracle Database and high capacity storage equipment. * By virtue of an agreement signed with the

UPI United Press International (UPI) is an American international news agency whose newswires, photo, news film, and audio services provided news material to thousands of newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations for most of the 20th c ...

in 1995, PETRA started to transmit news through satellite that reaches all parts of the world. * In 1997, PETRA developed with

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...

support an electronic photo archiving system that helped the agency to store more than 100,000 photos out of 500,000 photos it owns that depict some very important events in the history of Jordan and the region. * In 1998, PETRA got Internet connection; it launched its first website of news and photos. Frequent upgrades have been conducted on the website to cope with the latest information and technological developments. * In 1999, PETRA introduced a new version of its news system (nepras) to confront the

Y2K The year 2000 problem, also known as the Y2K problem, Y2K scare, millennium bug, Y2K bug, Y2K glitch, Y2K error, or simply Y2K refers to potential computer errors related to the formatting and storage of calendar data for dates in and after ...

threat. The new version integrated the data, photo and documents archiving systems. * In 2001, PETRA introduced a program enabling its journalists in local governorates and abroad to access the nepras system through the Internet. By virtue of this system, journalists can access nepras wherever they are, create their news reports and pass them to the editing page. * In 2004, PETRA developed programs that allow automatic upgrading of news and photos on its website. It also introduced an electronic monitoring system that records news bulletins, store them electronically and use them in Petra's bulletins. * PETRA is currently using an internal system linked to two servers working with

Windows 2003 Windows Server 2003 is the sixth version of Windows Server operating system produced by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows NT family of operating systems and was released to manufacturing on March 28, 2003 and generally available on April 24, 2 ...

operating system.

References

External links