Wire Service

Wire services are often called news gathering agencies, a term that accurately describes the function of these organizations that disseminate news and feature materials that are prepared and shared by subscribers or media owners. The Associated Press is a U.S.-based, not-for-profit wire service that is member-owned and one of the largest newsgathering organizations in the world. Reuters is an international news agency that is headquartered in Great Britain and is now part of Thomson Reuters; it bills itself as the world's largest international multimedia news agency that provides headline news, world news, business and investing news and a wide range of other news and information. Purported to be the oldest news agency in France is the Agence France-Press, dating back to 1835.

Bureaus of these wire services send news stories and photographs to their subscribers, and wire services may also offer specialized coverage (e.g., sports, financial and feature services). Their broadcast wires offer news in a form appropriate for those media. Supplemental wire service syndicates are formed by the major metropolitan newspapers, which may also offer these services nationwide.

When a story that a public relations practitioner placed in a local medium gets “picked up” by a wire service, it is disseminated to other media regionally, nationally, or worldwide. Of course, public relations practitioners can also send releases directly to wire service bureaus.

In addition to these wire services, the public relations practitioner may elect to pay specialized public relations wire services to send media releases to news media. Such news wires that are available to public relations clients have the advantage of offering simultaneous transmission of news releases to regional and national news media. The public relations practitioner is charged for this service, but public relations news wires operate similarly to other wire service news bureaus by providing journalists with news releases as well as other information that public relations practitioners want sent to the media, for example, photos, graphics, spread sheets, and audio and video recordings, as well as advisories and invitations to news conferences. Some public relations wire services also supply basic news data banks for storing releases and published stories, which can give a news story a longer shelf life. The public relations news wires services may also track media use, for example, such as a clipping service that provides clients with tear sheets of print media coverage.

Public relations wire services have increased credibility compared to news releases that are sent by public relations practitioners directly to news media because news release copy is checked by the public relations wire services, which value their reputation for reliability among the media they serve. Further, many large circulation newspapers have public relations news wire computer feeds, and this electronic link to a newsroom can be an advantage over mailed news releases, which reporters and editors may never open and which are vulnerable to weekend and holiday delays, or— more commonly today—media releases that public relations practitioners, themselves, send electronically to news media. Thus, many public relations practitioners consider the expense of public relations news wires to be worth the price when broad coverage and convenience are important as well as the increased credibility attributed to several of the public relations wire services.

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