The wire news serivce

When thinking of the definition of a wire news service, thoughts will immediately gravitate towards the telegraph. It is true that wire news organizations did use the telegraph and send news over the wire, but that is obviously not the case now due to technological advancements.    

Wire news services became prominent during that era and have evolved over the years. Two of the main wire services are the Associated Press and Reuters. 

The beginnings of the Associated Press were formed in 1846 when five New York newspapers formed a cooperative to collaborate on some stories. The papers realized that it would cheaper and more effective on all of them to put their resources together for stories on the Civil War and Mexican-American War. 

Their partnership was called the New York Associated Press. They also created another organization called the Harbor News Association to collectively receive news from overseas and Europe. Eventually, those two merged. Later, the New York Associated Press merged with the Associated Press, formerly known as the Western Associated Press. The conjunction resulted in the current Associated Press. 

The Associated Press is also known for writing AP Style Books for proper journalism writing. The first one was released in 1951 as a short handbook for all AP writers and eventually expanded to widespread use as the journalists' language. 

Nowadays, the Associated Press has deals with thousands of print, television and radio news stations to share their news stories. 

Since the Associated Press has so many reporters, the organization covers a wide variety of topics that it is useful for smaller market news groups to use their stories. AP was become well-known for its short prose and sentences that get straight to the point. 

While the Associated Press bases most of its efforts in the United States and some parts of North America, Reuters puts most of its effort toward Britain and the commonwealth. 

Reuters was founded in Britain in 1851 as a news service that relied upon telegraphs and the occasional carrier pigeon. This came around the time of the successful submarine telegraph that would help transmit news across long distances. 

In the 1800's, Reuters had expanded to South America and Far East Asia. Then in 1865, Reuters became the first European news organization to announce the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. 

By the 1960's and 1970's, Reuters was widely acclaimed for its financial and stock coverage. 

During the 1980's the company became publicly traded, but as a safety net to ensure unbiased news they implemented a maximum of 15% control in its constitution. In the 2000's, Reuters merged with Thomson Group PLC to become Thomson Reuters. 

In conclusion, the main wire service organizations are still critical in the news reporting industry. While they may not use telegraphs as a way to spread their information, they use television, print and radio. 

The Associated Press and Reuters both have large databases of video, news coverage and photos for their partners to use to enhance unbiased news coverage. 

The goal of both organizations is to stay unbiased when reporting the news, which is critical to the ability of informed debate and for people to make up their minds on an issue to enhance the marketplace of ideas.