This category covers establishments primarily engaged in furnishing news, pictures, and features and in supplying news reporting services to newspapers and periodicals. Separate establishments of newspaper and periodical publishers that are engaged in gathering news are classified as auxiliaries.
514110 (New Syndicates)
As of 1997, there were 527 establishments classified as news syndicates employing more than 9,400 people, with combined industry sales reaching $1.4 billion. In addition to the broad coverage of mainstream wire services, organizations within the news syndicates category cover specialized areas such as regional news services (Panafrican News Agency and Macedonian Press Agency), industry-specific services (Computer Wire and International Business News Service), and government information (Federal News Service and Capitol News-wire), to name a few.
The genesis of U.S. news syndicates can be traced to the construction of the first successful telegraph line in 1844. When completed, the line connected the cities of Washington and Baltimore and was immediately utilized by newspapers in Washington as a means of receiving news of the Maryland State Convention in Baltimore. As more lines were constructed, more and more newspaper publishers recognized this new communications technology as a valuable means of receiving news from distant locations. It was through the effort by newspaper publishers to share access to the telegraph lines, and to share the costs associated with using this new technology as a news gathering tool, that news syndicates came into being.
The National Associated Press (AP) was a collective formed in 1897 from various city, state, and regional Associated Press units. AP bylaws allowed its members to refuse association membership to applicants whose newspapers were located in the same city as those members (a practice which the U.S. Supreme Court in 1945 held to be an illegal restraint of competition). By 1907, there was a growing pool of newspapers that had been denied membership into AP, including most of the newspapers owned by E.W. Scripps. That year, Scripps challenged the AP monopoly on national news brokering by establishing the United Press Association, a commercial venture which, after taking over William Randolph Hearst's International News Service in 1958, would go on to become United Press International (UPI).
During the 1960s and 1970s, the number of competing newspapers declined, leaving many cities with only one newspaper. Newspaper publishers who had felt competition-driven pressure to subscribe to both the AP and UPI services now felt that it was safe to let one of them go. In the ensuing fight to retain its subscribers, AP fared better than its rival. Although UPI was still one of the four major news syndicates serving the international market—along with AP, London-based Reuters, and France's Agence France-Presse—and was second only to AP domestically, it reported a pre-tax loss of $12 million in 1980. Financial difficulties continued on through the decade, and in June, 1992, UPI was acquired in bankruptcy court for $3.95 million in cash by Middle East Broadcasting Center Ltd. (M.B.C.), a London-based television news and entertainment company owned by a group of Saudi businessmen. At the time of the sale, UPI employed about 450 people full-time, and another 2,000 part-time. Its new comeback strategy as a privately held company focused on small-market newspapers and radio stations. In the area of new media, UPI provides national news online to The Microsoft Network.
The Associated Press was the world's largest newsgathering organization during the late 1990s, with more than 235 news bureaus in about 70 countries around the world, providing news, photos, graphics and audiovisual services to more than 1,700 newspapers and 5,500 television and radio stations.
Founded in 1865, Reuters relayed news and financial information from more than 340,000 computer terminals in 158 countries in 1995. It also provided data feeds to financial markets and sold software for analyzing bonds, currencies, futures, options and stocks. Information was gathered from 267 exchanges and over-the-counter markets, from 4,700 subscribers who contributed data directly to Reuters, and from a network of about 1,936 journalists, photographers and camera people.
In addition to providing reports of general-interest news for the print and broadcast media, the news syndicates have expanded into areas of specialized interest. One area that has experienced significant growth is business news services. In 1967, AP joined with Dow Jones & Company to create a worldwide economic news service to foreign subscribers. In addition to the AP-Dow Jones News Service, Dow Jones also operates the Dow Jones News Service in both the United States and Canada. This service provides business information to brokerages, banks, corporations, and investment houses.
The 1990s also saw the Internet gain prominence for news syndicates, with Reuters entering the fray aggressively, providing news to all major on-line services, including The Microsoft Network. At AP, officials had also committed to increase their role in cyberspace and formed anew-media department, offering services such as new multimedia Internet "pages" via member newspapers' on-line services.
Albers, Rebecca Ross. "Wires Get Wired." Newspaper Association of America, 1995.
Badaracco, Claire. "Dow Jones & Company, Inc." International Directory of Company Histories, Chicago: St. James Press, 1991.
U.S. Bureau of the Census. 1997 Economic Census. 1999.
——. 1997 NAICS Definitions.
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