In journalism, news agencies are bodies established to supply news reports to newspapers, magazines, and radio and television broadcasters. They are also known as wire services or news services.
News agencies can be either corporations that sell news (e.g. Reuters), cooperatives composed of newspapers that share their articles with each other (e.g. AP), commercial newswire services which charge organisations to distribute their news (e.g. PR Newswire) or government agencies (especially in Communist countries and other one-party states).
News agencies generally prepare 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 can also subscribe.
News agencies are distinct from news syndicates that distribute comic strips and other editorial material, such as columns and features, and also from PR services that distribute press releases. Sometimes news agencies have separate arms for such work, but many such organizations are completely separate.
But even with that said, you could argue that the newswire model, be it for bloggers or otherwise, has some serious problems, one's a content problem, the other's bigger IMO, it has to do with distribution.
Newswire services are dependent on a commodity that has a steadily decreasing value.
For now, Reg FD is a *huge* driving force (cough, shackle) for the continuing use of existing newswire services, but as the definition of fair disclosure evolves (and it has to), you can see how fast things might change.
While this may not be a statistically significant sampling of all U.S. journalists across all beats, the results of the tech reporter survey backs the common belief among the PR set that journalists don't see a major difference between news wires.
Netspoke was advised by their PR agency that as a privately-held company based in Boston, their news would be of interest to local media and to vertical trade media, but not be covered by local media outlets outside of the Boston area.
He agreed that the main competition is PR Newswire, and admits that if a publication receives both PRN and BW, odds are that neither is treated any differently.
Feeds |
Contact