Associated Press

:This article concerns the news service. For other uses, see AP (disambiguation).

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The Associated Press, or AP, is an American news agency that claims to be the world's oldest and largest. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers and broadcast stations in the United States, who both contribute stories to it and use material written by its staffers. Many newspapers and broadcasters outside the United States are AP subscribers -- that is, they pay a fee to use AP material but are not members of the cooperative.

Related Topics:
American - News agency - Cooperative - Newspaper

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As of 2005, AP's news is used by 1,700 newspapers, in addition to 5,000 television and radio outlets. Its photo library consists of over 10 million images. The AP has 242 bureaus and serves 121 countries, with a diverse international staff drawing from all over the world.

Related Topics:
As of 2005 - Television - Radio

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The collapse of United Press International, AP's traditional competitor, has left it as the only national news service in the United States of America. The other rival English-language news services, such as Reuters and the English language service of Agence France Presse, are based outside the United States. It is noteable that the AP Stylebook has become the de facto standard for newswriting in the country.

Related Topics:
United Press International - English-language - Reuters - Agence France Presse - AP Stylebook

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The AP has a straightforward, "just-the-facts" writing style, often using the inverted pyramid style of writing so that stories can be edited to fit a newspaper news-hole without losing the essence of the story. The explosion of media and news outlets with the arrival of the Internet has made such concise writing less necessary, and raised the need for more feature-style writing.

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It has also posed a threat to AP's financial structure. On April 18, 2005, at its annual meeting, AP announced that as of 2006 it would, for the first time, begin charging separate fees for posting articles and pictures online. News outlets that buy AP's news, sports, business and entertainment coverage have previously been allowed to place the material online at no extra cost.

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U.S. employees are represented by the News Media Guild

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