A
News bureau is an office for gathering or distributing
newsNews is the communication of information on current events which is presented by print, broadcast, Internet, or word of mouth to a third party or mass audience.- Etymology :...
. Similar terms are used for specialized
bureauBureau may refer to:* Office** Public office** Government agency** News bureau* Desk* Chest of drawers* The Bureau, English New Wave soul group* Bureau County, Illinois* Le Bureau, a French television series...
s, often to indicate geographic location or scope of coverage: a
Tokyo bureau refers to a given news operation's office in Tokyo, Japan;
foreign bureau is a generic term for a news office set up in a country other than the primary operations center; a
Washington bureau is an office, typically located in
Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C. , formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, the District, or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States, founded on July 16, 1790...
, that covers news related to national politics in the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
The term is related to but distinct from
News desk, which refers to the editorial function of assigning reporters and other staff, and otherwise coordinating, news stories, and sometimes the physical desk where that occurs, but without regard to the geographic location or overall operation of the news organization.
A
News bureau is an office for gathering or distributing
newsNews is the communication of information on current events which is presented by print, broadcast, Internet, or word of mouth to a third party or mass audience.- Etymology :...
. Similar terms are used for specialized
bureauBureau may refer to:* Office** Public office** Government agency** News bureau* Desk* Chest of drawers* The Bureau, English New Wave soul group* Bureau County, Illinois* Le Bureau, a French television series...
s, often to indicate geographic location or scope of coverage: a
Tokyo bureau refers to a given news operation's office in Tokyo, Japan;
foreign bureau is a generic term for a news office set up in a country other than the primary operations center; a
Washington bureau is an office, typically located in
Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C. , formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, the District, or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States, founded on July 16, 1790...
, that covers news related to national politics in the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
The term is related to but distinct from
News desk, which refers to the editorial function of assigning reporters and other staff, and otherwise coordinating, news stories, and sometimes the physical desk where that occurs, but without regard to the geographic location or overall operation of the news organization. For example, a foreign bureau is located in a foreign country and refers to all creative and administrative operations that take place there, whereas a
foreign desk describes only editorial functions and may be located anywhere, possibly as an organizational unit within the news organization's home office.
Operation of news bureaus
A news bureau is traditionally operated out of an office by a single news outlet such as a radio, television, or newspaper news program. A single news company such as
CNNCable News Network, almost always referred to by its initialism CNN, is an U.S. cable news network founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first network to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television network in the United States...
or NPR may use a single bureau and office staff for all of its programs, and even those of
subsidiaryA subsidiary, in business matters, is an entity that is controlled by a separate entity. The controlled entity is called a company, corporation, or limited liability company and in some cases can be a government or state-owned enterprise, and the controlling entity is called its parent...
or other affiliated companies. For convenience, to save money and space, and to ensure the availability of necessary services (such as video feeds and studios), different companies may share an office space or co-locate at a single office building. News agencies may also operate news bureaus, and major public relations sources (such as governments, large companies, or advocacy groups) may operate news bureaus of their own to create, rather than simply report, news stories.
Decline
Traditional
news mediaThe news media refers to the section of the mass media that focuses on presenting current news to the public.These include print media ; broadcast media , and increasingly Internet-based media .The term news trade refers to the concept of the news media as a business...
, particularly television news and newspapers, have cut the number and size of news bureaus in recent decades for several reasons. They face declining profitability due to increasing competition from Internet news sources, and therefore have less money to spend on news-gathering.
Newspapers rely increasingly on cooperative arrangements with counterparts elsewhere, and often will accept stories from their sister organizations rather than investigating stories themselves. Similarly, smaller newspapers may formally affiliate to sponsor cooperative bureaus that operate as
press poolPress pool refers to a group of news gathering organizations that combine their resources in the collection of news. A pool feed is then distributed to members of the broadcast pool who are free to edit it or use it as they see fit. In the case of print reporters, a written pool report is...
s to serve more than one news organization (and sometimes a large number of organizations) from a single office. When news sources combine operations following a merger or other
business consolidationConsolidation or amalgamation is the act of merging many things into one. In business, it often refers to the mergers or acquisitions of many smaller companies into much larger ones. The financial accounting term of consolidation refers to the aggregated financial statements of a group company as...
, the surviving company often combines or eliminates redundant bureaus. Growing
multiculturalismMulticulturalism is the acceptance of multiple ethnic cultures, for practical reasons and/or for the sake of diversity and applied to the demographic make-up of a specific place, usually at the organizational level, e.g. schools, businesses, neighborhoods, cities or nations...
has facilitated this process: rather than demanding a reporter from their own country or locale who has been sent on assignment, news audiences have come to tolerate or even expect to see stories in remote locations covered by people who live locally; this empowers the audience to make their own judgments about any apparent cultural difference between themselves and the news subjects, rather than leaving the function of cultural interpretation entirely up to the reporter.
The often-criticized practice of
parachute journalismParachute journalism is an often derogatory term used to describe the practice thrusting journalists into an area to report on a story in which the reporter has little knowledge or experience. The lack of knowledge and tight deadlines often result in inaccurate or distorted news reports, especially...
allows
News mediaThe news media refers to the section of the mass media that focuses on presenting current news to the public.These include print media ; broadcast media , and increasingly Internet-based media .The term news trade refers to the concept of the news media as a business...
to cover stories remotely using journalists who are generalists rather than more specialized field experts. Rather than leaving journalists in place waiting for breaking news to occur, smaller staff can be assigned as needed to wherever there are breaking stories, either by commuting to the physical location or by synthesizing reports from remote sources. An even more controversial practice, sometimes described as a reaction to declining resources rather than a legitimate cost-saving measure, is to rely on and reprint information from press releases written by
public relationsPublic relations is the practice of managing the communication between an organization and its publics. Public relations gains an organization or individual exposure to their audiences using topics of public interest and news items that do not require direct payment...
professionals working for people or companies that are the subject of an article, or have an interest in an article, without spending the resources to verify or conduct independent research on the matter. Another practice that limits news bureaus is embedded reporting, whereby
war correspondentA war correspondent is a journalist who covers stories firsthand from a war zone. In the 19th century they were also called Special Correspondents.-Methods:...
s travel under the care of military units rather than at their own direction. The ability to quickly and safely travel throughout a war zone, and to obtain interviews with soldiers and coverage of important conflicts, appeals to news media, but at the cost of journalistic independence and, according to some, objectivity.
Nontraditional bureaus
The interaction between professional journalists, witnesses, and news subjects has evolved considerably. Whereas news subjects and bystanders were once treated simply as witnesses to be interviewed for a news story, media have now accepted them as part of the news process. There are many antecedents to
Citizen journalismCitizen journalism is the concept of members of the public "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information," according to the seminal 2003 report We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information...
. For example, meteorologists would count on amateurs to gather weather data to report, or interview willing subjects unrelated to a news story for "man on the street" interviews. As early as the 1930s the
Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
encouraged millions of amateur
People's correspondentPeople's Correspondents, are a kind of amateur proletarian journalists who have filed reports from the frontlines about the march toward communism since the early years of the Soviet Union. Originally initiated by Vladimir Lenin as a tool for exposing mismanagement and corruption, several million...
s to expose corruption and otherwise report on news. Beginning in the 1970s, media, unable to respond quickly enough to obtain compelling coverage of natural disasters and weather phenomena such as tornadoes would count on hobbyists for photographs and film footage. With improvements in technology and as
video cameraA video camera is a camera used for electronic motion picture acquisition, initially developed by the television industry but now common in other applications as well. The earliest video cameras were those of John Logie Baird, based on the electromechanical Nipkow disk and used by the BBC in...
s and
video-equipped cell phone A videophone is a telephone with a video screen, and is capable of full duplex video and audio transmissions for communication between people in real-time....
s became widely available, they set up formal programs to gather material from nonprofessionals. For example, in August, 2006,
CNNCable News Network, almost always referred to by its initialism CNN, is an U.S. cable news network founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first network to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television network in the United States...
launched "CNN Exchange", by which the public is encouraged to submit "I-Reports" comprising photographs, videos, or news accounts. More recently newspapers have incorporated blogs, once seen as a threat to conventional news practice, either by creating blogs of their own (and deputizing local or field-specific bloggers as a second, lower-paid tier among their recognized staff of
independent contractorAn independent contractor is a natural person, business, or corporation that provides goods or services to another entity under terms specified in a contract or within a [verbal agreement. Unlike an employee, an independent contractor does not work regularly for an employer but works as and when...
s) or by covering blogs as news sources.
In 2006
ReutersReuters Group Limited is a UK-based, Canadian-controlled news service and former financial market data provider that provides reports from around the world to newspapers and broadcasters. News reporting once accounted for less than 10% of the company's income. Its main focus was on supplying the...
opened its first virtual news Bureau, staffing real-life reporters in a virtual office in
Second LifeSecond Life is a virtual world developed by Linden Lab that launched on June 23, 2003, and is accessible via the Internet. A free client program called the Second Life Viewer enables its users, called Residents, to interact with each other through avatars...
.
CNNCable News Network, almost always referred to by its initialism CNN, is an U.S. cable news network founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first network to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television network in the United States...
followed suit in October 2007, but took a citizen journalism approach, allowing residents of Second Life to submit their own reportage. Although the news audience of Second World is relatively small, and declining, media consider it a training ground for themselves and participants, applicable to future virtual news projects.
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