Francis Foster

Stock prices can move from London to New York, across the Atlantic.

And this business still influences how our news is gathered to this day.

Reuter, I think Julius Reuter, if I'm getting his name right,

notices that there's a gap in the telegraph lines in Belgium.

And he uses carrier pigeons to move the news for stock trading and other business news purposes.

And from the money from that and various other ventures, he eventually opens a newswire that uses telegraph lines

to move news, gather news from around the world and sell it to newspapers.

Famously, the Times of London refuses to be his customer for several years, and he keeps getting scoop after scoop, and eventually they bow and become a customer.

These businesses become quite large.

Reuters in London, the Associated Press forms in the 1840s in the United States.

The Germans, the French, and the Spanish, and the Italians all form their news wires.

But theirs are different.

In the English-speaking world, these are for-profit ventures that are accountable to their customers.

They're doing news.

Part of news is being accountable, letting your audience have a say.

How much do we trust you?

Do we believe you?

Because if we don't believe you, you're not valuable, right?

You're just like a government agency issuing edicts.

It's just not interesting.