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Havas

Havas was the world's first news agency, and after a century of operation, formed the core of the present Agence France-Presse.

Origins

Charles-Lewis Havas (1783–1858), a Frenchman of Hungarian background, began to develop an informal network of European reporters (today they would be called stringers) in 1825 to report about European financial and political events for French businesses, banks, and a few newspapers. Havas himself initially acted as translator. In 1832 he created L'Bureau Havas in Paris, with an office located not far from the main post office, the French stock exchange, and several newspaper offices. A growing staff (which briefly included Bernhard Wolff and Julius Reuter, both of whom would go on to form their own news agencies) assembled financial news from other European capitals (some transmitted by semaphore telegraphs), translated it, and distributed it by messenger or mail to client newspapers in France and elsewhere.

Havas soon took over two small competing news bureaus. With some 200 client newspapers and a subsidy from the government, in 1835 the growing operation became known as the L'Agence Havas, usually recognized as the inception of the world's first news agency. By 1840 it was sending and receiving some news reports by pigeon, enabling same-day news from London and Brussels to appear in major Paris newspapers.

By 1845, Havas operated as an effective monopoly in France and began to utilize the electric telegraph, initially with a line newly installed between Paris and Rouen. The founder retired a year later and his son Auguste-Jean took over direction of the expanding operation. In 1852, Havas took over a budding advertising agency, allowing the merged entity to provide both news and advertising to client papers and spreading the cost of operation. For many years, the advertising side of Havas helped to support the expense of news gathering.

Beginning in 1860, Havas began to report news from and to South America, and to much of Europe over the 1870s. In 1879 family control ended with sale of the growing news and advertising agency to a Paris banker.

News Cartel

As early as 1856, Havas, Reuter in Britain, and Wolff in Germany signed an exchange agreement to share financial news from their own countries. It soon expanded to more general news, and in 1859 to an agreement to create joint offices in different cities, subject at different times to the imperialist moves by the countries' respective governments.

By 1870, the three agencies established a cooperative news cartel, soon dubbed “The Ring,” each agency taking responsibility for part of the world (Havas took the French colonies plus news of Spain and Portugal, Italy, and all of South America where no national agencies developed until after 1900), thus eliminating overlapping reporting and their related costs. All three made effective use of the growing web of undersea cables as well as land telegraphy and were accordingly often called “wire” services. With some changes, the cartel agreement was renewed in 1890 and again in 1914.

By World War I, Havas occupied a semi-official role in France. While the agency was a primary source of wartime news, it could issue only those stories approved by the French military command. Havas also refused to carry German military communiqués. Havas faced growing competition from new national news agencies after World War I.

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