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A news bureau is an office for gathering or distributing
news News is information about current events. This may be provided through many different Media (communication), media: word of mouth, printing, Mail, postal systems, broadcasting, Telecommunications, electronic communication, or through the tes ...
. Similar terms are used for specialized bureaus, often to indicate a geographic location or scope of coverage: a ‘Tokyo bureau’ refers to a given news operation's office in
Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...
; 'foreign bureau' is a generic term for a news office set up in a country other than the primary operations center; a ‘Washington bureau’ is an office, typically located in
Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
, that covers news related to national politics in the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
. The person in charge of a news bureau is often called the bureau chief. The term is distinct from a news desk, which refers to the editorial function of assigning reporters and other staff, and otherwise coordinating, news stories, and sometimes the physical desk where that occurs, but without regard to the geographic location or overall operation of the news organization. For example, a foreign bureau is located in a foreign country and refers to all creative and administrative operations that take place there, whereas a foreign desk describes only editorial functions and may be located anywhere, possibly as an organizational unit within the news organization's home office.


Operation of news bureaus

A news bureau is traditionally operated out of an office by a single news outlet such as a radio, television, or newspaper news program. A single news company such as
CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...
or
NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...
may use a single bureau and office staff for all of its programs, and even those of
subsidiary A subsidiary, subsidiary company or daughter company is a company owned or controlled by another company, which is called the parent company or holding company. Two or more subsidiaries that either belong to the same parent company or having a s ...
or other affiliated companies. For convenience, to save money and space, and to ensure the availability of necessary services (such as video feeds and studios), different companies may share an office space or co-locate at a single office building.
News agencies A news agency is an organization that gathers news reports and sells them to subscribing news organizations, such as newspapers, magazines and radio and television broadcasters. A news agency may also be referred to as a wire service, newswire, ...
may also operate news bureaus, and major public relations sources (such as governments, large companies, or advocacy groups) may operate news bureaus of their own to create, rather than simply report, news stories.


History of news bureaus


Decline

Traditional
news media The news media or news industry are forms of mass media that focus on delivering news to the general public or a target public. These include news agencies, print media (newspapers, news magazines), broadcast news (radio and television), and th ...
, particularly
television news News broadcasting is the medium of broadcasting various news events and other information via television, radio, or the internet in the field of broadcast journalism. The content is usually either produced locally in a radio studio or telev ...
and
newspapers A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports ...
, have cut the number and size of news bureaus in recent decades for several reasons. They face declining profitability due to increasing competition from Internet news sources, and therefore have less money to spend on news-gathering. Newspapers rely increasingly on cooperative arrangements with counterparts elsewhere and often will accept stories from their sister organizations rather than investigating stories themselves. Similarly, smaller newspapers may formally affiliate to sponsor cooperative bureaus that operate as
press pool A press pool, media pool or news pool is an arrangement wherein a group of news gathering organizations combine their resources in the collection of news. A pool feed is then distributed to members of the broadcast pool who are free to edit it ...
s to serve more than one news organization (and sometimes a large number of organizations) from a single office. When news sources combine operations following a
merger Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are business transactions in which the ownership of companies, other business organizations, or their operating units are transferred to or consolidated with another company or business organization. As an aspect ...
or other business consolidation, the surviving company often combines or eliminates redundant bureaus. Growing
multiculturalism The term multiculturalism has a range of meanings within the contexts of sociology, political philosophy, and colloquial use. In sociology and in everyday usage, it is a synonym for "Pluralism (political theory), ethnic pluralism", with the tw ...
has facilitated this process: rather than demanding a reporter from their own country or locale who has been sent on assignment, news audiences have come to tolerate or even expect to see stories in remote locations covered by people who live locally; this empowers the audience to make their own judgments about any apparent cultural difference between themselves and the news subjects, rather than leaving the function of cultural interpretation entirely up to the reporter. The often-criticized practice of
parachute journalism Parachute journalism is the practice of placing journalists into an area to report on a story in which the reporter has little knowledge or experience. The lack of knowledge and tight time limit, deadlines often result in inaccurate or distorted ...
allows news media to cover stories remotely using journalists who are generalists rather than more specialized field experts. Rather than leaving journalists in place waiting for breaking news to occur, smaller staff can be assigned as needed to wherever there are breaking stories, either by commuting to the physical location or by synthesizing reports from remote sources. An even more controversial practice, sometimes described as a reaction to declining resources rather than a legitimate cost-saving measure, is to rely on and reprint information from
press release A press release is an official statement delivered to members of the news media for the purpose of providing information, creating an official statement, or making an announcement directed for public release. Press releases are also considere ...
s written by
public relations Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organization (such as a business, government agency, or a nonprofit organization) to the public in order to influence their perception. P ...
professionals working for people or companies that are the subject of an article, or have an interest in an article, without spending the resources to verify or conduct independent research on the matter. Another practice that limits news bureaus is
embedded reporting Embedded journalism refers to news reporters being attached to military units involved in armed conflicts. While the term could be applied to many historical interactions between journalists and military personnel, it first came to be used in the ...
, whereby war correspondents travel under the care of military units rather than at their own direction. The ability to quickly and safely travel throughout a war zone, and to obtain interviews with soldiers and coverage of important conflicts, appeals to news media, but at the cost of journalistic independence and, according to some, objectivity.


Nontraditional bureaus

The interaction between professional journalists, witnesses, and news subjects has evolved considerably. Whereas news subjects and bystanders were once treated simply as
witnesses In law, a witness is someone who has knowledge about a matter, whether they have sensed it or are testifying on another witnesses' behalf. In law a witness is someone who, either voluntarily or under compulsion, provides testimonial evidence, e ...
to be interviewed for a
news story An article or piece is a written work published in a print or electronic medium. It may be for the purpose of propagating news, research results, academic analysis, or debate. News articles A news article discusses current or recent news of eit ...
, the media have now accepted them as part of the news process. There are many antecedents to
citizen journalism Citizen journalism, also known as collaborative media, participatory journalism, democratic journalism, guerrilla journalism or street journalism, is based upon public citizens "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, a ...
. For example, meteorologists would count on amateurs to gather weather data to report, or interview willing subjects unrelated to a news story for "
man on the street ( )Vox Populi
. Oxford Diction ...
" interviews. As early as the 1930s the
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
encouraged millions of amateur
People's correspondent People's correspondents are a kind of amateur proletarian journalists who have filed reports from the frontlines about the march toward communism since the early years of the Soviet Union. Originally initiated by Vladimir Lenin as a tool for exposi ...
s to expose corruption and otherwise report on the news. Beginning in the 1970s, media, unable to respond quickly enough to obtain compelling coverage of natural disasters and weather phenomena such as
tornadoes A tornado is a violently rotating column of air that is in contact with both the surface of the Earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud. It is often referred to as a twister, whirlwind or cyclone, altho ...
would count on hobbyists for photographs and film footage. With improvements in technology and as
video camera A video camera is an optical instrument that captures videos (as opposed to a movie camera, which records images on film). Video cameras were initially developed for the television industry but have since become widely used for a variety of other ...
s and video-equipped cell phones became widely available, they set up formal programs to gather material from nonprofessionals. For example, in August 2006,
CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...
launched "CNN Exchange", by which the public is encouraged to submit "I-Reports" comprising photographs, videos, or news accounts. More recently newspapers have incorporated
blogs A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...
, once seen as a threat to conventional news practice, either by creating blogs of their own (and deputizing local or field-specific bloggers as a second, lower-paid tier among their recognized staff of
independent contractor Employment is a relationship between two parties regulating the provision of paid labour services. Usually based on a contract, one party, the employer, which might be a corporation, a not-for-profit organization, a co-operative, or any othe ...
s) or by covering blogs as news sources. In 2006,
Reuters Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency was estab ...
opened its first virtual news Bureau, staffing real-life reporters in a virtual office in
Second Life ''Second Life'' is an online multimedia platform that allows people to create an avatar for themselves and then interact with other users and user created content within a multi player online virtual world. Developed and owned by the San Fra ...
.
CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...
followed suit in October 2007, but took a citizen journalism approach, allowing residents of Second Life to submit their own reportage. Although the news audience of Second World is relatively small, and declining, media consider it a training ground for themselves and participants, applicable to future virtual news projects.


References

{{reflist


External links


CNN exchange
- official site
second life
at Reuters News