Just wondered, suppose a really huge bit of news such as the death of the Queen or equivalent happened, how does news of the death reach Reuters, and how does Reuters then get the news out to the television/radio/other media?
How does Reuters decide the magnitude of importance of a story? Is there a ranking system? Does Reuters do anything else apart from be a news company? Does Reuters have any competition from other news agencies?
Most news agencies (including Reuters) operate what's known as "News Wires": a rather old fasioned term for an electronic means of distributing news to subscribers. In recent years, they've also began operating their own television channels which feed raw rushes and live images out to the same subscribers. These channels can also be used to play pre-cut news items, sports reports and business updates so that a subscriber can use them in their own programming. Ever heard on radio, "Here's the latest Business news in association with Reuters..." That radio station has a deal with Reuters to use them to provide Business news.
The main agencies are Reuters and Associated Press. The European Broadcasting Union also are a kind of news agency, using their Eurovision network to share news and other programming between member broadcasters.
And of course, most major international news operations do monitor their competitors - so any huge news story, once broken by one channel will soon be carried by all the others !
Now don't hold me to this explanation - I'm sure someone in the industry will be able to tell you a lot more, but here we go:
1) Event
2) Presented to prime reporter by original source
3) Selected for use by prime reporter
4) Prime reporter decides whether to report to a news agency
5) (Traditionally...) telegraph it to a news agency
6) News agency offers it to media organisations
7) Item bought by media organisation
8 ) Editor decides whether to use it
9) Broadcast/publication of event as news.
Now - as I said - that is a very rough version - something I picked up in A-level General Studies - but it might be of use to you?! Now, noggin, please give us the correct version...!
Reuters has competition from myriad news agencies around the world. One is the Associated Press. When I used to work at the newspaper, we used the AP wire service to pull down photos and stories for use in the paper. The AP website was where we got our information:
The AP usually ranks urgent items at three major levels:
News Alerts
are usually front-page news items. (example: A new budget agreement was reached in Congress.) You can see the link for "News Alert History" on the main website page.
Urgent
stories are breaking news items of significant importance. (example: Someone famous is murdered.)
Flash
stories are of the utmost importance, and may warrant a special edition of the paper. Used rarely. (example: Man walks on moon.)
As you may see from the website, items are coded (or "slugged") by subject and locality.
That's just the beginning. Let me know if you have questions!
