Newswire

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A service or organization that gathers news stories and distributes them to newspapers, broadcasters, and other media outlets for publication
2. An agency that collects and transmits news reports to subscribing newspapers, television stations, and other news organizations
3. A news distribution system that supplies journalists and media companies with stories, photographs, and information for their reports

Etymology: "Newswire" is a plain compound: "news" joined to "wire," with the "wire" referring to the telegraph wire that carried messages over long distances. The combination names a service that transmits news reports electronically to newspapers, broadcasters and other subscribers, rather than a literal wire you could hold in your hand. The sense of "wire" as a telegraph line gave rise to a whole family of terms in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when news agencies began sending dispatches by telegraph and then by teleprinter. Compounds like "newswire" followed the same pattern, naming the medium as much as the content, so the word preserves the technology of an earlier era in its second half.

Synonyms: news agency, wire service, news service