News agencies as content providers and purveyors of news: A mediahistoriographical study on the development and diversity of wire services
Date
2009-03
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch
Abstract
This study examines the history, development and diversity of news agencies. It studies the
major agencies and pinpoints how smaller wire services that sometimes purvey niche news
seek to offer a more diverse global news-flow.
The linkage between news agencies and technological developments, and how wire services
have helped advance technology, is examined since the first agencies began in the 1800s, up
to the current era of the Internet.
The rise of television and the subsequent ascent of the Internet prompted new demands for
more diverse news procurement. This accelerated the convergence of different media and
has exposed challenges and opportunities to news agencies, large and small.
Alongside the telegraph, news wire services expanded from supplying news and information
locally to being global players, helping the world shrink.
The mediahistoriographical approach engages a critical examination of literature sources
regarding the development of the major wire services, and some of the smaller players. The
literature, along with interviews with news agency experts, provides the material to examine
wire services.
The study shows how some original agencies leveraged opportunities offered by their
standing in powerful nations to become dominant transnational players. The ascendancy of
the mega-agencies compounded limited news-flows from developed to poorer nations,
while an expansion of diversified news-flows has not matched technological progression.
This study concludes by recommending greater recognition of the importance of news
agencies and more scholarly examination of them, as studies on them appear scarce
compared to those on other media branches, such as newspapers, the electronic media and
the Internet.
More studies into the development of both mainstream and alternative news agencies would
pave the way for a better understanding of how they function and could provide clues as to
how they might be able to better sustain themselves as more diverse entities for the benefit
of the public discourse.
Through the above, this dissertation seeks to contribute, in a small way, to rectifying a
knowledge disparity regarding a key component of the mass media, namely the news
agency.
Description
Thesis (MPhil (Journalism))--University of Stellenbosch, 2009.
Keywords
Theses -- Journalism, Dissertations -- Journalism