of the newspaper , it is possible to collect such news without special difficulty, but when the horizon widens conditions are changed . If at one time each paper gathered its own news and
there was no collective responsibility for its reliability , such as is furnished to-day by the great news-gathering agencies , it must be remembered that the field from which news was gathered was
much more restricted than is the case to -day. But with the increase in the number of periodicals of all kinds, with the growth in size of each individual copy, with the enor mous expansion in their circulation, and with the consequent development of the periodical as a business enterprise , there has followed the upbuilding of intricate, complicated machinery that on the one hand controls and regulates the output of the press and on the other hand facilitates its further extension .
The first real beginnings of associations of newspapers for mutual benefit in securing foreign news were made in America
about 1827 . At that time “ there existed a combination of the
leading newspaper establishments of the city (New York ) for obtaining foreign intelligence ; but it appears to have been rather a combination of laziness than of enterprise - the object being
not so much to obtain news promptly as to insure that no one should obtain news to the disadvantage of the rest.” 10 The Journal of Commerce had been jealously excluded from
this association, but its new owners had known of a rowboat that had prowled around Boston Harbor and collected news from incoming European packets and they quickly transferred
the idea to New York where they built a yacht, named it the Journal of Commerce , erected a semaphore telegraph to which their news was signalled and which through various relays
reached the publication office.11
The forerunner of the Associated Press had been organized in America when several New York papers joined forces with
the telegraph company and established " a staple of news.” Other newspapers gradually were admitted to membership , an offensive and defensive alliance was formed with the Reuter 10 J. P. Thompson , Memoir of David Hale, pp. 54-55; Memoirs of James Gordon Bennett, pp. 134 -135. u M . E . Stone, “ Newsgathering as a Business,"
Century Magazine,
June, 1905, 70: 299 – 310 ; Fifty Years a Journalist, pp . 204 - 207.
