Newswires

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Dispatches of current events sent electronically by news agencies to media outlets for publication or broadcast
2. Reports of recent happenings distributed over telegraph or data lines by press agencies to subscribing newspapers and stations
3. Items of breaking information transmitted by wire services that editors and broadcasters pick up for their own coverage

Etymology: "Newswires" is the plural of "newswire", a compound of "news" and "wire". The sense is literal: a newswire is a wire service, a channel carrying news reports, and the plural refers to the several such services that feed news to newspapers, broadcasters and websites. The "wire" in the name comes from the telegraph wires over which news was once transmitted, so the word preserves a technology that has long since been replaced by satellites and fibre-optic cable, while the wording stayed behind.

Synonyms: wire service, news service