the.com/wire service
The original copy-paste: one reporter, one scoop, a thousand papers run it verbatim.
means A news agency that gathers stories and distributes them to many subscribing newspapers, radio, and TV stations at once.
from From the literal telegraph wire: 19th-century agencies like the Associated Press and Reuters sent dispatches over telegraph lines to member papers, so 'wire' meant the transmission line itself before it meant the service riding on it. The phrase stuck through the telephone and teletype eras, long after actual copper wire stopped being the point — a fossil word, like 'dial' a phone.
- origin
- named for telegraph wires, not editorial opinion
- big three
- AP, Reuters, AFP dominate global coverage
- business model
- sells same story to competing newspapers simultaneously
- style rule
- strips bias to survive being reprinted anywhere