High Wires

摘要

Where does news come from? The answer, much of the time, is from news-wires. Many of the stories in newspapers, on television, radio and online are based on dispatches filed by the big news agencies. The biggest international newswires, Associated Press (AP) and Reuters, date back to the expansion of the telegraph in the mid-19th century, when rapid news-gathering first became possible. The agencies have usually been wholesalers of news; newspapers, broadcasters and websites act as retailers, repackaging and selling news to consumers alongside material generated in-house.rnSome, such as ap (a co-operative owned by its subscribers) and the state-backed French News Agency (AFP), have stuck to that model. But Reuters, like the Dow Jones newswire (which grew out of the Wall Street Journal), has developed arnhuge business providing information to financial-services firms, for which rapid, accurate news is highly valuable. A more recent arrival, Bloomberg, started out as a provider of such information but has turned into a news agency as well, creating a worldwide network of bureaus and syndicating stories to newspapers.