The Basilica News Agency came into being along with the Basilica Media Centre on October 27, 2007. The official launch of the website and the publication of the first news items took place on June 16, 2008.
The news website of the Romanian Patriarchate was conceived with the mission of “reflecting reality as seen by the ecclesial body itself, at all levels: Hierarchy, clergy, monastic life and laity”, according to Fr. Nicolae Dascălu, the agency’s first director.
On March 1, 2009, Fr. Ciprian Florin Apetrei took over the role of director, coordinating the activity of the site as an aggregator of news from all the dioceses of the Romanian Patriarchate, taking information directly from the source, with little intervention on the form or content.
Since September 1, 2015, the editorial staff has been headed by Aurelian-Nicolae Iftimiu, coordinating patriarchal advisor. During this period, the Basilica News Agency has refined itself as a genuine Orthodox news website with international visibility.
In 2015, Basilica.ro entered social media. In 2016, the agency went through a rebranding process: the current logo was created and the initial motto “Good news shared to all” was synthesized as “The Good to Know”, a slogan that encompasses the purpose and specific functions of the institution. The same year saw the launch of the religious news app for Android.
Our work has steadily diversified. At the editorial level, we sought to vary content and style in religious topics as well as to address themes from different areas such as culture, arts, society, environment or even sports.
In 2017, Basilica News Agency opened its newsletter service. At the end of 2017, the “Basilica Monthly Review” appeared in pdf format, redesigned in 2019 as a magazine that is easier to browse on phone screens. The project is currently undergoing a reorganization process.
In 2018, the editorial staff of Basilica.ro published the volume “Words of Faith, Lights for Life”, a thematic anthology of 365 quotations by His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel.
Following the model of major news agencies, in July 2018 the photojournalists of Basilica.ro initiated the well-known series “The Week in Pictures”. 2019 saw the first photo exhibition organized by Basilica.ro in collaboration with 14 photographers, “The face of the Romanian Village” and in 2020 we organized the agency’s first photo competition, entitled “The Life of the Church in Times of the Pandemic”.
In parallel with its journalistic activity, Basilica News Agency started as a pioneer in Orthodox digital media and, constantly following the trends of social networks, has gradually turned into a model of communication and the image of dioceses, parishes or Orthodox associations.
Currently, Basilica.ro provides dedicated and network-specific bilingual content on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. It is also present with current news on Telegram, as well as various videos on its official YouTube account.
Basilica.ro recently surpassed 111,000 articles published, with an average of over 20,000 unique visitors per day.
The Basilica News Agency team currently consists of nine people: a director, an editor-in-chief, four editors, two photojournalists and a social media administrator.
After 15 years of uninterrupted activity, the editorial team would like to thank all colleagues in the Basilica Media Centre for their support, as well as all contributors and readers who promote “The Good to Know”.
Photo credit: Ziarul Lumina
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