Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

News Agencies

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Handbook of Media and Communication Economics

  • 41 Accesses

Abstract

Without news agencies, the global media system would not be able to operate in the form in which we know it today. Regardless of the respective media landscape and freedom of opinion, print, radio, TV and online media depend on permanently obtaining reliable information about political events, key economic figures or even natural disasters. News agencies collect, check, and process such information in order to disseminate it further. However, their business model is put under pressure as the media changes. Thus, they are increasingly trying to win customers outside the traditional field of news media.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Publications on media economics also focus heavily on B2C media.

  2. 2.

    Since 1957 AFP has a legal status similar to that of the public broadcasters in Germany (last revised by the Paris National Assembly in 2012). The contract states that those costs incurred by the AFP from the provision of “services of public interest” must be covered by public funding (AFP, 2012). Around 40% of the AFP’s funding come from the state. (Simons, 2011; AFP, 2021b). The recent agreement covers the period 2019–2023

  3. 3.

    ANP (Netherlands), APA (Austria), belga (Belgium), dpa (Germany), Keystone-SDA (Switzerland), NTB (Norway), pa media (Great Britain), /ritzau/ (Danmark), STT (Finnland), TT News Agency (Sweden).

  4. 4.

    For further literature on specialized agencies such as SID, the German sport information service, KNA, the German catholic news agency, and epd, the German evangelical press service, see for example Segbers, 2007, pp. 53–57; Zschunke, 2000, pp. 82–86. News agencies with a focus on finance include, for example, Dow Jones, Bloomberg, CNBC Money, CNN Money, Financial Times or Thomson Reuters (for further information see, for example, Palmer et al., 1998, pp. 61–78; Friedrichsen et al., 2015, pp. 213–221).

  5. 5.

    Media cooperations are, for example, RZP, the Association of German Regional Newspapers (Segbers, 2007, pp. 58–59). In the TV sector, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) was founded in 1950 for the purpose of exchanging news films. Today it is an association of 73 public broadcasters in 56 states in Europe and 34 other associated broadcasters in Asia, Africa and the Americas. (EBU, 2017, for more information on TV News Exchange see for example Hjarvard, 1998, pp. 202–226).

  6. 6.

    From the perspective of information imperialism, the fact that news agencies were the earliest drivers of media globalization has to be viewed critically (see, for example, Mowlana, 1997; Boyd-Barrett & Rantanen, 1998). The NWICO and ISP movements should be cited as examples. In the 1970s, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) launched the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) initiative to give the so-called non-aligned countries (NAM) a voice against the Western news agencies (see also Boyd-Barrett & Rantanen, 1998, pp. 3–4 and 10–11; Mowlana, 1997, pp. 193, 216). The NWICO movement was terminated in the 1990s due to opposition from the US and the UK. The idea of a more globally balanced communication power is continued by various movements, such as National Lawyers Guild, World Association for Christian Communication (WACC), Institute for Latin America (IPAL) or Union for Democratic Communication (UDC). Alternative news agencies also include the Inter Press Service (IPS), which was founded in 1964 as an international non-profit journalists’ cooperative and has been recognized since 1994 as a non-profit organization for development cooperation. IPS specializes in news from the global South and covers some 100 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America (see, for example, Zschunke, 2000, p. 93; Giffard, 1998, pp. 191–201). On the influence of global agencies since the nineteenth century, see also the detailed presentation by Volker Barth (Barth, 2020).

  7. 7.

    The discussions about the ancillary copyright and similar plans are in full swing – critics criticize that this is primarily about the protection of publishers’ interests, i.e. a dispute between traditional media companies and newer market participants such as search engines. See also the ideas of the then EU Digital Commissioner Günther Oettinger (for example Meedia, 2016; Otto, 2018). In April 2019, there was an EU copyright amendment that has to be transposed into national law by the member states (Beuth, 2020). On this legal basis, Google and Agence France-Presse (AFP) have signed an agreement that regulates the remuneration of the international news agency’s content used by the search engine operator. The five-year agreement is the first signed by a news agency under the 2019 EU copyright amendment (Der Standard, 2021).

  8. 8.

    An investigation by the European Commission into whether state support for the AFP is permissible revealed in 2014 that the AFP fulfils tasks of general interest that require public funding. A legal framework for this has been in place for the first time since 2015. This leads to a restructuring of the relationship between AFP and the state. On the one hand, there is to be compensation for the general interest tasks and, on the other hand, the state must since then subscribe to the AFP service at the usual commercial prices (AFP, 2015, p. 8).

  9. 9.

    dpa cooperates with APA as well as Keystone-SDA. APA operates a joint company for e-publishing offers and apps with dpa digital services (dpa, 2016c). Keystone-SDA cooperates with AP (global), dpa as well as ADN-Kronos (IT) and APA (AT). APA is also a shareholder of Keystone-SDA (Stadler, 2017). APA in turn cooperates with all three global agencies, ANSA, dpa, Keystone-SDA and national agencies in Eastern Europe, among others.

  10. 10.

    Cooperations between global agencies are rather rare.

  11. 11.

    Members of EANA are around 30 European news agencies. Topics such as copyright, pricing policy, technology and access to information sources are discussed via the joint platform (EANA, 2022).

  12. 12.

    Group 39 was founded in 1945 – as a successor to Hellcommune, founded in 1939 – and is the oldest initiative of independent news agencies in Central and Northern Europe (Vyslozil, 2014a).

  13. 13.

    The former dpa managing director Michael Segbers was quoted as follows in the industry magazine “Journalist”: “I am very happy that our subsidiaries help us to make profits” (Kornfeld, 2015). Laszlo Trankovits reports that Segbers “did not always make himself popular” when he referred to this fact, for example at company meetings (Trankovits, 2015, p. 156).

  14. 14.

    Reuters, together with AP, is the major supplier of video among news agencies, such as footage to TV stations.

  15. 15.

    In addition to AP news content, users can also access regional news, i.e. that of AP shareholders.

  16. 16.

    For example, APA operated as an Internet provider for end customers for only one year (Dörfler & Pensold, 2001, p. 537).

  17. 17.

    It was only a few years ago that a resolution of the dpa shareholders overturned this policy. Since then, classified advertising periodicals have also been able to obtain dpa content with the product “dpa-Avis”. (dpa, 2015a).

  18. 18.

    Agency expert Peter Zschunke (2015) sees the standing of Reuters in Germany waning (see also IfM-Mediendatenbank, 2016, where it was listed as one of the largest media companies only until 2015).

  19. 19.

    At the end of the 1990s, this figure was almost 50 percent (Zschunke, 2000, p. 81). In the mid-2000s, it was still 38% (Segbers, 2007, p. 166). AFP supplies government bureaus with information, similar to other non-media clients at other agencies, but to a much greater extent.

  20. 20.

    Due to country specifics, Keystone-SDA, for example, produces its basic service (for the traditional media of print, radio and TV) in German, French and Italian (sda, 2016).

  21. 21.

    Shoemaker and Vos (2009) define “gatekeeping” as “the process of culling and crafting countless bits of information into the limited number of messages that reach people each day” (p. 1).

    The extent to which the gatekeeper role is changing as a result of digitalization is the subject of controversial debate. On the one hand, the gatekeeper role of the media as a whole and thus also of agencies is increasingly questioned (Kramp et al., 2013, p. 63). On the other hand, McNelly (1959) states that “the most important gatekeeping, [...,] is done before the news reaches the wire editor of a newspaper” (p. 24). Current studies show an increasing dependence of publishers on agency content for online news – due to cost-cutting measures and the time pressure to which online publishing is exposed (Welbers et al., 2016, pp. 17–18).

  22. 22.

    As of January 1, 2017, dpa, which was previously the second largest shareholder, left epa, (dpa, 2016f).

  23. 23.

    In its early days, APA built up a network of correspondents and employed its own editors in London, Zurich, Prague, Brno, Paris, Rome and Budapest (Dörfler & Pensold, 2001, p. 424). By 1964, APA was already sourcing most of its foreign service, more than 60%, from the world agencies known as the “Big Four” as well as dpa (Dörfler & Pensold, 2001, p. 474). In February 1993, negotiations regarding Austria’s accession to the EU began, which is why the APA opened an editorial foreign office in Brussels (Dörfler & Pensold, 2001, p. 531).

  24. 24.

    The licence price for a simple right to use texts, for example, is between 150 and 350 euros, depending on the volume (dpa, 2016d).

  25. 25.

    As long as it is merely a matter of individual quotations together with a link to the original source, there is no legal action against it.

  26. 26.

    In 2015, dpa increased the subscription price for the basic service for the first time in years (Kornfeld, 2015).

  27. 27.

    Since 2004, buyers have received discounts on five-year contracts if they waive correspondent reports in the dpa basic service and for the first time for high circulations. 85% of the daily newspapers entered into a new five-year contract, only a few waived correspondent reports (Segbers, 2007, pp. 157–158).

References

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences, St. Pölten, Austria

    Johanna Grüblbauer

  2. Valtech S.A., Münster/Hamburg, Germany

    Johannes Wagemann

Authors
  1. Johanna Grüblbauer
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Johannes Wagemann
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Johanna Grüblbauer .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. FH St. Pölten, St. Pölten, Austria

    Jan Krone

  2. FH St. Pölten, St. Pölten, Austria

    Tassilo Pellegrini

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2023 Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature

About this entry

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this entry

Grüblbauer, J., Wagemann, J. (2023). News Agencies. In: Krone, J., Pellegrini, T. (eds) Handbook of Media and Communication Economics. Springer, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-34048-3_31-2

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-34048-3_31-2

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Wiesbaden

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-658-34048-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-658-34048-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Economics and FinanceReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation