Introduction
As the world is becoming increasingly connected and interdependence to each other, the need not to ignore some of the factors that aided this advancement becomes more important. The world had travelled from wars to truce. The era of war was probably because of lack of information gathering or poor communication system and the current stage of truce could be the essence of communication, news distributed and information sold out.
And then, countries of the world, living in truce is simply no absolute fault of newswires but the human nature, deem as domineering, conflicting and the ugly presence of selfish desires innate in every man.
The facts above stressed the significance of news agencies and how their evolvement over time has helped achieved globalization, industrial revolution, product proliferation, innovations and technological breakthroughs as well as the realization of our humanely form.
Concept Of Global News Agencies
Global news agency is a broader word for conglomeration of international and local news agencies. It involves an organization that collects news items and distributes them to newspapers or broadcasters across boundaries of nations and with some of these agencies having offices outside their mother land.
Their main onus is basically to gather pieces of news stories and sells them to the subscribing news channels, magazines, television broadcasters, radios, etc.Just like in Nigeria where we have NAN (News Agency of Nigeria), same way various news agencies exist in other countries of the world like Reuters in United Kingdom, Associated Press in United states, Agence France-Presse in France, Deutsche Presse Agentur (DPA) in Germany, ITAR-TASS in Russia, Kyodo News in Japan, Xinhua News Agency in China, the Iraqi News Agency (INA), Sierra Leone News Agency and other regional news agency etcetera. All these put together make up what we refer to as global news agencies.
It is important to note also that, most of these news agencies listed above fall into the following categories:
Transnational/world news agencies e.g.; Associate press, France press, Reuters etc.The continental/regional news e.g.; such news agencies are not as rich as world news agencies and they operate only within their continent. We have such in Asia region; Asian news international. The national news agencies e.g.; every country in the world has one form of news agency like NAN in Nigeria, Ghana news agency etc.
History Of News Agencies
Communication and newswire are as old as man. Its evidence is traceable to creation. In the holy book, the encounter between the serpent and Eve was a news break especially when the cunny creature told the woman what she has never heard before about the fruit in center of the garden of Eden. The woman digested the news and also went on, to publish it in the ears and heart of the man. Don’t forget, every breaking news comes with a reaction and in that story, it was very clear, beholding how God reacted to the incident.
Thus, news agencies have trajectory through traditional path, manual ways of collecting and transferring information to journalists or clients and had experienced a paradigm shift by embracing modern technologies for quick and easy reach to the outside world.
The creation of telegraph in the 1850s, the proliferations of news agencies in other places and emergence of rival broadcasting news agencies saw to the build-up of the various news agencies we have today.
However, for the purpose of concise write up, we would briefly look at the following top news agencies.
Viz: Reuters, Associated Press (AP), Agence France Presse, News Agency of Nigeria (NAN)
Reuters; is among the top three major news agencies in the world. It is the largest British news agency; it was founded by a German called Paul Reuter in 1851. Before now, the original name of this seminal figure in the world of news was Israel Bere Josafat and his father was a Jewish rabbi.
Reuter was known to be nimble in achieving breakthroughs in news break. For example, in 1865, Reuters was the first wire-service company in Europe to transmit the news about the assassination of the US president Abrahim Lincoln.
You should know that one of the modes of transmission used by Reuter at the earlier stage of operation was by carrier pigeons flying between Aachen and Brussels.
However, with invention and innovation, Reuter started using the newly invented telegraph and relocated to London. As of now, Reuters is no more an independent company owned by Reuters Group PLC. It was acquired in 2008 by Thomson Reuters.
It transmits news in English, French, Spanish, German, Italian and various other languages. No wonder it has a very good web presence offering 16 regional editions and with extensive content available. The last two months of stories, photos and videos are searchable and can be read and watched for free. Reuters currently offers 18 RSS feeds and 9 podcasts that you can subscribe to.
Associated Press (AP):
The Associate Press was founded in 1846, in the month of May to be precise. It is a non-profit news agency, with about 240 bureaus in more than 120 countries. It was formed to share the cost of transmitting news the Mexican-American war.
Associated Press entered the broadcast world fully in 1941 when it began selling or distributing news to radio stations. It created its own radio network in 1974. it established APTV, a global video newsgathering agency.
In 2004, the AP moved its world headquarters from its longtime home at 50 Rockefeller Plaza to a huge building at 450 West 33rd Street in Manhattan. Associate Press is owned by its contributing television, radio and news channels in United States.
All of these contribute news stories to Associate Press, which is used by more than 17000 newspapers and 5000 radio/television broadcasters. Gary Pruitt is the present CEO of AP.
The French Agence France-Press (AFP):
it was started in 1835. Making it the oldest news agency in the world. It has its headquarters in Paris. It is worthy to note that the French Agence is among the top three largest global news agency in the world together with Associated Press and Reuters.
Like every other giant’s news agency, the France press communicates news in various languages including French, English, Arabic, Spanish, etcetera.
Agence France Press, no doubt, due to competitiveness and quest for superiority at a time created a long conflict between the agency and Google, which made it to withheld its content from the Google news platform or search engine for several years. But at the moment, they are on more friendly terms and Google hosts AFP content, hence, platform such Google News is a good place to search for and read these agency stories and articles.
News Agency of Nigeria (NAN):
NAN is the primary news content provider for Nigeria’s newspapers, electronic media and bloggers. It came into existence via decree 19 in 1976 enacted by the government of Nigeria. It came into full operation in October 2, 1978.
It started by providing general news service such as daily bulletins published to it subscribers. The agency got to the stage it is today through adapting to the emerging gradual changes in the societies and embracing enhancement in the news world.
Evident, is the introduction of satellite technology in 1998, which suddenly aided the agency to commence transmitting stories to its clients simultaneously as they were edited and fit to print.
The inevitably place of transportation also played key role in the journey of NAN. For example, with substantial reach and mobility across the 36 states of Nigeria, and with 501 editorial staff nationwide and a correspondent in New York, NAN were able to operate in the capacity of the speed of light.
This is because, at the stance of any news break, NAN is already where the news is. NAN produce more than 200 stories per day, with additional collaboration with Reuters and Xinhua news agencies.
And hear this, no other news organization covers Nigeria more than NAN. And none reports the world better also.
Geographical And Topical News Beat
Geographical Beat
Geographical beat could also be called territorial beat. The term reflects the distinction between general assignment reporters and specialized (beat) reporters covering a specific area (beat) as well as the subject matter or geographic divisions between areas of reporting by which media organizations seek to structure the social environment they cover
Topical Beat
Topical beats focus on specific issues like polities; weather and health. It might be helpful to be more specific within those broad areas such as being an expert on one particular politicians
Author:
Arimokwu Sunday
CEO/MD COMRADE REALITY SHOW AND MOVIE SERIES LIMITED
INFORMATION IS LIFE 