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Associated Press
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The Associated Press (AP) is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staffers. Many newspapers and broadcasters outside the United States are AP subscribers, paying a fee to use AP material without being contributive members of the cooperative.
, the AP's news is published and republished by more than 1,700 newspapers, in addition to more than 5,000 television and radio broadcasters.
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Encyclopedia
The Associated Press (AP) is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staffers. Many newspapers and broadcasters outside the United States are AP subscribers, paying a fee to use AP material without being contributive members of the cooperative.
, the AP's news is published and republished by more than 1,700 newspapers, in addition to more than 5,000 television and radio broadcasters. The cooperative's photograph library consists of more than 10 million images. It operates 243 news bureaus and serves 121 countries, with a diverse international staff drawing from all over the world.
AP also operates The Associated Press Radio Network, which provides newscasts at the top and bottom of the hour for broadcast and satellite stations. AP Radio also offers news and public affairs features, feeds of news sound bites, and long form coverage of major events.
As part of their cooperative agreement with The Associated Press, most member news organizations grant automatic permission for the AP to distribute their local news reports. For example, on page two of every edition of The Washington Post, the newspaper's masthead includes the statement, "The Associated Press is entitled exclusively to use for republication of all news dispatches credited to it or not otherwise credited in this paper and all local news of spontaneous origin published herein."
The AP Stylebook has become the de facto standard for news writing in the United States. The AP employs the "inverted pyramid formula" for writing that enables news outlets to edit a story to fit its available publication space without losing the story's essential meaning and news information.
The decline of AP's traditional rival, United Press International, as a major American competitor in 1993 left the AP as the only nationally oriented news service based in the United States. Other English-language news services, such as Reuters and the English language service of Agence France-Presse, are based outside the United States.
History
The Associated Press was formed in May 1846 originally as the Harbor New Association. It was organized by New York City newspapers Journal of Commerce, the New York Sun, New York Herald, the Courier and Enquirer, the Express, and the New York Tribune to share all news that arrived by telegraph. A driving force in the organization's formation was Moses Yale Beach, publisher of the New York Sun, when he invited other New York publishers to join the Sun in a cooperative venture to cover the Mexican-American War.
In 1850 the Philadelphia Public Ledger and Baltimore Sun paid to receive the news without joining the consortium. In the following years more clients and a seventh New York newspaper joined the consortium. In order to keep telegraph costs to a minimum it sent the stories to regional locations which were then responsible for distributing it among themselves leading to rise of regional press groups the Western Associated Press (WAP) in the Midwest, Northwestern Associated Press, the New England Associated Press, the Philadelphia Associated Press, and the New York State Associated Press.
Several press associations attempted to break the near monopoly in the 1860s and 1870s until the United Press International started in 1882. In 1891 it was revealed that UPI was getting AP news for free causing a rift among the subset groups and most defected to the UPI. AP responded by striking a monopoly deal with Reuters in England, Havas in France and Wolff in Germany. Most of the papers returned to the AP.
In 1898 the AP discovered that Chicago Inter Ocean was using news from a wire set up by then rival New York Sun publisher William M. Laffan. AP refused service to the Inter Ocean and the paper filed suit with the Illinois Supreme Court which ruled that the AP was similar to a public utility and could not refuse service.
The Associated Press of Illinois then dissolved and set up shop under New York law in 1900 as a non-profit membership organization.
Key dates
- 1849: the Harbor News Association opened the first news bureau outside the United States, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to meet ships sailing from Europe before they reached dock in New York.
- 1876: Mark Kellogg, a stringer, is the first AP news correspondent to be killed while reporting the news, at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. His final dispatch: "I go with (Commander George Armstrong) Custer and will be at the death."
- 1893: Melville E. Stone becomes the general manager of the reorganized AP, a post he holds until 1921. Under his leadership, the AP grows to be one of the world's most prominent news agencies.
- 1899: AP uses Guglielmo Marconi's wireless telegraph to cover the America's Cup yacht race off Sandy Hook, New Jersey, the first news test of the new technology.
- 1914: AP introduces the Teletype, which transmitted directly to printers over telegraph wires. Eventually a worldwide network of 60-word-per-minute Teletype machines is built.
- 1935: AP initiates WirePhoto, the world's first wire service for photographs. The first photograph to transfer over the network depicted an airplane crash in Morehouseville, New York, on New Year's Day, 1935.
- 1938: AP expands to new offices at 50 Rockefeller Plaza (known as "50 Rock") in the newly built Rockefeller Center in New York City, which would remain its headquarters for 68 years.
- 1941: AP expands from print to radio broadcast news.
- 1945: AP Paris bureau chief Edward Kennedy defies an Allied headquarters news blackout to report Nazi Germany’s surrender, touching off a bitter episode that leads to his eventual dismissal by the AP. Kennedy maintains that he reported only what German radio already had broadcast.
- 1994: AP launches APTV, a global video newsgathering agency, headquartered in London.
- 2004: The AP moves its headquarters from 50 Rock to 450 W. 33rd Street, New York City.
AP Sports Polls
The AP is known for its Associated Press polls on numerous college sports in the United States. The AP polls ranking the top 25 NCAA Division I (Football Bowl Subdivision and Football Championship Subdivision) college football and NCAA Division I men's and women's college basketball teams are the most well known. The AP composes the polls by collecting and compiling the top-25 votes of numerous designated sports journalists. The AP poll of college football was particularly notable for many years because it helped determine the ranking of teams at the end of the regular season for the collegiate Bowl Championship Series until the AP, citing conflict of interest, asked for the poll to be removed from the bowl series. Beginning in the 2005 season, the Harris Interactive College Football Poll took the AP's place in the bowl series formula. The AP poll is the longest serving national poll in college football, having begun in 1936.
Each year on 31 March the AP announces the winner of the NCAA Men's basketball "player of the year" (POY) award.
Associated Press Television News
In 1994, London-based Associated Press Television (APTV) was founded to provide agency news material to television broadcasters. Other existing providers of such material at the time were Reuters Television and Worldwide Television News (WTN).
In 1998, AP purchased WTN, and APTV left the Associated Press building in the Central London and merged with WTN to create Associated Press Television News (APTN) in the WTN building, now the APTN building in Camdentown.
Controversies
Christopher Newton
The Associated Press fired Washington, D.C. bureau reporter Christopher Newton in September 2002, accusing him of fabricating at least 40 people and organizations since 2000. Some of the nonexistent agencies quoted in his stories included "Education Alliance," the "Institute for Crime and Punishment in Chicago," "Voice for the Disabled," and "People for Civil Rights."
Fair Use
In June of 2008 The AP sent numerous DMCA take down demands and threatened legal action against several blogs. The AP contended that the internet blogs where violating AP Hot News and copyright for linking to AP material and using headlines and short summaries in those links. Many bloggers and experts noted that the use of the AP news falled squarely in commonly accepted internet practices and within fair use standards. AP's response was announce that it was defining standards regarding citations of AP news. Subquently the AP announced a fee structure that limited free use and citation of AP Material to only four words. AP's citation license stipulates that it “reserves the right to terminate this Agreement at any time if Publisher or its agents finds Your use of the licensed Content to be offensive and/or damaging to Publisher’s reputation.
Shepard Fairey
In January 2009, the AP asked graffitti artist Shepard Fairey for credit and compensation for using a photograph of 2008 US Presidential candidate Barack Obama, taken by Mannie Garcia on assignment for the AP at the National Press Club in Washington. Fairey used the photo to create a poster that became famous during the 2008 campaign. The AP claims copyright of the photograph, since Garcia was an employee of the AP at the time he took the photo. Fairey argues that his image is a significant modification of the original photograph, and as such is covered under fair use law. A lawsuit was filed Feb 9 2009, on Fairey's behalf, by the Stanford Law School's Fair Use Project and a San Francisco-based law firm.
Hot News
In January 2008, the Associated Press sued much smaller competitor All Headline News (AHN) claiming that AHN infringed on its copyrights and a 'quasi-property' right to facts. The AP lawsuit alleges that competitor AHN copies the AP’s headlines and news without permission and without paying a syndication fee. After AHN moved to dismiss all but the copyright claims brought by AP, a portion of the lawsuit was dismissed.
Governance
The Associated Press is governed by an elected board of directors.
- William Dean Singleton, Chairman and CEO, MediaNews Group, Denver, Colorado
- Tom Curley, President & CEO
- R. Jack Fishman, Publisher and Managing editor, Citizen Tribune, Morristown, Tennessee
- Dennis J. FitzSimons, Chairman President and CEO, Tribune Company, Chicago, Illinois
- Walter E. Hussman, Jr., Publisher, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Little Rock, Arkansas
- Julie Inskeep, Publisher, Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, Fort Wayne, Indiana
- Boisfeuillet (Bo) Jones, Publisher and CEO, The Washington Post, Washington, D.C.
- Mary Junck, President and CEO, Lee Enterprises, Davenport, Iowa
- David Lord, President, Pioneer Newspapers, Seattle, Washington
- Kenneth W. Lowe, President and CEO, E.W. Scripps Company, Cincinnati, Ohio
- Douglas H. McCorkindale, Chairman, Gannett, McLean, Virginia
- R. John Mitchell, Publisher, Rutland Herald, Rutland, Vermont
- Steven O. Newhouse, Chairman, Advance.Net, New York, New York
- Gary Pruitt, Chairman, President and CEO, The McClatchy Company, Sacramento, California
- Michael E. Reed, CEO, Liberty Group Publishing, Inc., Downer's Grove, Illinois
- Bruce T. Reese, President and CEO, Bonneville International, Salt Lake City, Utah
- Jon Rust, Publisher, Southeast Missourian, Cape Girardeau, Missouri
- Jay R. Smith, President, Cox Newspapers, Atlanta, Georgia
- David Westin, President, ABC News, New York, New York
- H. Graham Woodlief, President, Publishing Division, Media General, Richmond, Virginia
Web resource
The AP's multi-topic structure has lent itself well to web portals, such as Yahoo!, MSN and so forth all have news sites which constantly need to be updated. Often, such portals will rely on AP and other news services as their first source for news coverage of breaking news items. Yahoo's "Top News" page gives the AP top visibility out of any news outlet. This has been of major impact to the AP's public image and role, as it gives new credence to the AP's continual mission of having staff for covering every area of news fully and promptly. The AP is also the news service used on the Nintendo Wii's News Channel. In 2007 Google announced it was paying for Associated Press content displayed in Google News, but the articles are not permanently archived.
See also
External links
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- , August 19, 2004. Accessed on October 2, 2006.
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