The Associated Press

The Associated Press or AP is a United States news agency founded in 1846 . Currently the AP is produced in five languages: English , German , Dutch , French and Spanish .

Several newspapers and media stations outside the United States subscribe to the AP — meaning they pay to use AP material but are not members of the cooperative.

When United Press International collapsed in 1993 as a major competitor, it left the AP as the only news service based in the United States. The other rivals that also publish in English, such as the British news agencies Reuters and the French Agence France-Presse , have bases outside the United States.

Summary

[ disguise ]

• 1 AP in Spanish
  • 1 First decades
  • 2 Latin American package for newspapers
  • 3 AP in the Caribbean
• 2 Statistics
• 3 Source

AP in Spanish

First decades

AP began delivering news in Latin America to two Cuban newspapers in 1898 . In 1914 , a cablegram from La Nación in Buenos Aires , requesting AP news on World War I, led to the expansion of AP service to South America . AP established an agency in Buenos Aires in 1917 and La Nación subscribed in 1919 .

AP began reporting in Spanish on October 1 , 1941 , with the start of a new multinational service known as La Prensa Asociada (LPA). LPA was the designation for the Spanish AP operation, not a separate content package. LPA delivered a combination of Spanish and English text for newspapers in South America and the Caribbean .

Already in the 1950s, AP’s LPA and United Press International were the leading agencies for Spanish-language news and photos in Latin America, followed by Agence France Press . Reuters and Agencia EFE also covered news in Spanish as early as the 1960s.

Latin American newspaper package

AP formed an editors’ bureau with Spanish-speaking specialists at its New York City headquarters in 1952 , thus creating a Spanish-language package for newspapers. AP news was delivered to and from Latin America via one radio signal with at least three, and then four, daily broadcasts on different radio frequencies. Each transmission included at least five photos. The transmissions were slow compared to today, and often had to be repeated because sunspots muddled the radio waves.

Articles from Latin America were sent to New York by radio until the late 1960s through state agencies or private companies such as All America Cables and Tropical Radio . The region’s first direct news broadcast was established in 1969 , when AP established a microwave connection between agencies in Panama and Mexico City .

AP in the Caribbean

The teletype for Puerto Rico newspapers was founded in the mid-1960s, and continues today. AP’s San Juan bureau leads coverage of Puerto Rico.

In the early 2000s , the AP Havana office reopened after being closed for almost three decades. AP was the second U.S. journalism company allowed to return to Cuba. The first was CNN .

Statistics

In 2005 , AP news was used in 1,700 newspapers and 5,000 television and radio stations. Its image library consists of more than 10 million photographs. The AP has 243 offices and reaches 121 countries, and is also the news agency with the largest number of employees in more than 120 countries (3,700). It also holds the record for Pulitzer Prizes , with a total of 49.

American employees, except for a small group classified as “administrative”, are represented by the News Media Guild and the Communication Workers of America .