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A 'news agency' is an organization of journalists established to supply news reports to organizations in the news trade: newspapers, magazines, and radio and television broadcasters. They are also known as 'wire services' or 'news services'.
News agencies can be corporations that sell news (e.g. Reuters and All Headline News (AHN)), cooperatives composed of newspapers that share their articles with each other (e.g. AP), commercial newswire services which charge organizations to distribute their news (e.g. Market Wire, Business Wire and PR Newswire). Governments may also control news agencies, particularly in authoritarian states, like China and the former Soviet Union or non-profit organizations operated by both professionals and volunteers. Australia, Britain, Canada, and many other countries also have government-funded news agencies. A recent rise in internet-based alternative news agencies like Scooplive and Scoopt, as a component of the larger alternative media have emphasized a "non-corporate view," as being largely independent of the pressures of business media.
News agencies generally prepare hard news stories and feature articles that can be used by other news organizations with little or no modification, and then sell them to other news organizations. They provide these articles in bulk electronically through wire services (originally they used telegraphy; today they frequently use the Internet). Corporations, individuals, analysts and intelligence agencies may also subscribe. The business proposition of news agencies might thus be responsible for the current trends in separation of fact based reporting from Op-eds.