Press agencies

This chapter examines press agencies, otherwise known as news agencies. News agencies have acted as a crucial, but often disregarded, facilitator of transnational journalism since the mid-nineteenth century. After an overview of the research on news agencies, this chapter explores two main examples to show the fundamentally transnational nature of news agencies. First, the long-lasting news agency cartel from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century shows how journalism was often not about competition, but cooperation for economic reasons. The cartel illustrates the remarkable stability of the structures underpinning transnational journalism. The second example illustrates a new direction in researching news agencies: incorporating the Global South. The globalization of Xinhua, China’s central news organization, since the late 1970s, offers a case study of the global expansion of news agencies in the era of decolonization. The example also highlights how news agencies and communication networks furthered a government’s foreign policy.