News agency

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See also: News agency (alternative)

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A news agency is an organization of journalists established to supply news reports to organizations in the news trade: newspapers, magazines, and radio and television broadcasters. These are known as wire services or news services.

[edit] Commercial services

News agencies can be corporations that sell news (e.g. Thomson Reuters). Other agencies work cooperatively with large media companies, generating their news centrally and sharing local news stories the major news agencies may chose to pick up and redistribute ( i.e. AP, Agence France-Presse (AFP)). Commercial newswire services charge businesses to distribute their news (e.g. Business Wire, the Hugin Group, Market Wire, PR Newswire, and ABN Newswire). Governments may also control news agencies: China (Xinhua), Britain, Canada, Russia (ITAR-TASS) and other countries also have government-funded news agencies which also use information from other agencies well.

The major news agencies generally prepare hard news stories and feature articles that can be used by other news organizations with little or no modification, and then sell them to other news organizations. They provide these articles in bulk electronically through wire services (originally they used telegraphy; today they frequently use the Internet). Corporations, individuals, analysts and intelligence agencies may also subscribe.

Internet-based alternative news agencies as a component of the larger alternative media emphasizes a "non-corporate view" that is independent of the pressures of corporate media, business media and government-generated news and releases.

[edit] Major news agencies

[edit] Market effects

Many publicly traded companies solicit business analysis firms to produce favourable reports and then submit these through wire services. These stories often form the basis for public news about a company and may affect stock performance.