Only a few large newspapers could afford bureaus outside their home city; they relied instead on news agencies, especially
Havas (founded 1835) in France—now known as
Agence France-Presse (AFP)—and the
Associated Press (founded 1846) in the United States. Former Havas employees founded
Reuters in 1851 in Britain and
Wolff in 1849 in Germany. In 1865, Reuter and Wolff signed agreements with Havas's sons, forming a cartel designating exclusive reporting zones for each of their agencies within Europe. For international news, the agencies pooled their resources, so that Havas, for example, covered the French Empire, South America and the Balkans and shared the news with the other national agencies. In France the typical contract with Havas provided a provincial newspaper with 1,800 lines of telegraphed text daily, for an annual subscription rate of 10,000 francs. Other agencies provided features and fiction for their subscribers. In the 1830s, France had several specialized agencies. Agence Havas was founded in 1835 by a Parisian translator and advertising agent,
Charles-Louis Havas, to supply news about France to foreign customers. In the 1840s, Havas gradually incorporated other French agencies into his agency. Agence Havas evolved into
Agence France-Presse (AFP). Two of his employees,
Bernhard Wolff and
Paul Julius Reuter, later set up rival news agencies,
Wolffs Telegraphisches Bureau in 1849 in Berlin and Reuters in 1851 in London.
Guglielmo Stefani founded the
Agenzia Stefani, which became the most important press agency in
Italy from the mid-19th century to World War II, in
Turin in 1853. The development of the telegraph in the 1850s led to the creation of strong national agencies in England, Germany, Austria and the United States. But despite the efforts of governments, through telegraph laws such as in 1878 in France, inspired by the British
Telegraph Act 1869 which paved the way for the nationalisation of telegraph companies and their operations, the cost of telegraphy remained high. In the United States, the judgment in
Inter Ocean Publishing v. Associated Press facilitated competition by requiring agencies to accept all newspapers wishing to join. As a result of the increasing newspapers, the Associated Press was now challenged by the creation of
United Press Associations in 1907 and
International News Service by newspaper publisher
William Randolph Hearst in 1909. Driven by the huge U.S. domestic market, boosted by the runaway success of radio, all three major agencies required the dismantling of the "cartel agencies" through the Agreement of 26 August 1927. They were concerned about the success of U.S. agencies from other European countries which sought to create national agencies after the First World War. Reuters had been weakened by war censorship, which promoted the creation of newspaper cooperatives in the Commonwealth and national agencies in Asia, two of its strong areas. After the Second World War, the movement for the creation of national agencies accelerated, when accessing the independence of former colonies, the national agencies were operated by the state. Reuters, became cooperative, managed a breakthrough in finance, and helped to reduce the number of U.S. agencies from three to one, along with the internationalization of the Spanish
EFE and the globalization of Agence France-Presse. In 1924,
Benito Mussolini placed Agenzia Stefani under the direction of
Manlio Morgagni, who expanded the agency's reach significantly both within Italy and abroad. Agenzia Stefani was dissolved in 1945, and its technical structure and organization were transferred to the new
Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata (ANSA). Wolffs was taken over by the Nazi regime in 1934. The
German Press Agency (dpa) in Germany was founded as a co-operative in
Goslar on 18 August 1949 and became a
limited liability company in 1951. Fritz Sänger was the first
editor-in-chief. He served as
managing director until 1955 and as
managing editor until 1959. The first transmission occurred at 6 a.m. on 1 September 1949. Since the 1960s, the major agencies were provided with new opportunities in television and magazine, and news agencies delivered specialized production of images and photos, the demand for which is constantly increasing. In France, for example, they account for over two-thirds of national market. == Big Three agencies ==