Mediafax (Romanian pronunciation: [ˌmedi.aˈfaks]) is a Romanian media company headquartered in Bucharest and founded in 1991. It is a part of the MediaPro Group and its primary line of business is a news and photography service that covers the needs of 90% of the Romanian printed media and 70% of the national TV and radio stations. The company's Mediafax Business Information products include a variety of business news and data, such as currency market, business opportunities, calls for tender, statistics and company data.
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Mediafax was set up in the fall of 1991, as a member of the MediaPro Group, within a market where Rompres, the state-owned news agency, held a monopoly. The first news items were typewritten and sent in envelopes to the headquarters of central newspapers. Later, newswires were sent nationwide through fax machines every hour. The initial team behind the Mediafax brand comprised 12 journalists. The name of the company comes from its beginnings on the news agencies market, when the newswires were sent through fax machines to the Romanian media.
On February 7, 1994, the company turned into a share company, Mediafax S.A., and expanded its team to approximately 100 journalists. In the same year, Mediafax launched its business service. The first product it offered was the Executive Package, which was structured on several types of economic information. Later, Mediafax launched Mediafax Foto service, to distribute Romanian and foreign news photographs. This services is the exclusive distributor of France Presse Photo (Agence France-Presse) on the domestic market.
In 1997, Mediafax started the Business Focus service, a real time business information service offering online access to news and news archives. This became part of the Mediafax’s corporate website started that year which made all the news, photos and archives available online.
Mediafax was the first on the Romanian market to offer professional media monitoring services to businesses and PR agencies. Back in 1998, when the Mediafax Monitoring Service was started, Romanian companies and institutions had no alternative but to clip the media with their own resources.
Mediafax Business Information products widened in 2000 to include business information flows specialized on distinct markets: construction, energy, tourism, IT&C, agriculture. The same year marks the appearance of the Mediafax Annual Report range which now covers five fields: Media and Advertising, Business Construct, Financial, Retail and Auto.
In 2003, Mediafax content services expanded to include Mediafax Mobility to offer mobile content to the largest mobile telephony operators in Romania. The projects run in partnership with Orange and Vodafone have transformed Mediafax into a WAP provider and integrator.
Today Mediafax has 4.5m euros in revenue, approximately 350 permanent staff and 150 collaborators and more than 1,700 corporate clients. Mediafax now posts approximately 500 news reports per day.
This business unit addresses Romanian mass-media and governmental institutions, providing the following products:
This division provides business information to large companies and SMEs, institutions, PR and marketing agencies
This division provides WAP content on mobile handsets and web advertising services.
Since Mediafax was one of the pioneers on the Romanian media market after the 1989 Revolution, many former employees are now working in the newsrooms of publications all over Romania, and in ministerial press offices (e.g.: European Integration Ministry, Ministry of Education).
Public figures that worked with Mediafax include the current spokesperson with the Presidency of Romania and previously of the Radu Vasile government (1998–1999), the secretary general of the Romanian Liberal Party (PNL) and the secretary of the Defense Commission within the Chamber of Deputies.