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1901 - 1950
The Modern Cooperative Grows |
| 1906 |
With regular telegraph
lines down, Paul Cowles, chief of the AP San Francisco
bureau delivers first word of the devastating earthquake
in that city by relaying a news bulletin via Honolulu.
Several weeks later AP institutes the "FLASH"
to alert editors to news of transcendent importance in
as brief a way as possible. |
| 1914 |
The introduction of the teletype
machine allows AP to transmit words by wire from keyboard
to distant printers. |
| 1916 |
AP transmits play-by-play to member newspapers directly
from Braves Field in Boston during the World Series between
the Brooklyn Nationals and the Boston Red Sox, a first.
AP and member newspapers combine resources to cover the
U.S. Presidential race between President Woodrow Wilson
and Republican Charles Evans Hughes. AP tallied votes
on a precinct-by-precinct, county-by-county basis. Two
days after the election, AP declares Wilson the winner
by a narrow margin. |
| 1919 |
AP begins to deliver news to overseas news organizations,
after the AP board of directors breaks agreements, originally
made by the Western Associated Press, with the European
news agencies that claimed exclusive rights to serve Latin
America and elsewhere.
On November 7, UP prematurely reports an Armistice ending
World War I. Jackson S. Elliott, AP’s General News
Editor, remains glued to the telephone when the call comes
in from the State Department at 2:15 p.m. and the bulletin
is rushed to all wires that the Germans have not yet signed.
They do not sign until November 11. |
| 1920 |
In the first radio broadcast of AP news, election returns
from the presidential race in which Warren Harding beat
James M. Cox are reported on KDKA radio in Pittsburgh. |
| 1921 |
AP breaks its tradition of writer anonymity after
Kirke L. Simpson writes a moving series about the burial
of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery.
In 1922, Simpson is the first AP writer to win the Pulitzer
Prize (see more on AP’s Pulitzer Prize winners
at www.ap.org/pulitzer).
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| 1927 |
AP inaugurates a department of news features and a mailed
photo service to illustrate and expand the AP news report.
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| 1931 |
Reflecting its international expansion, AP opens subsidiaries
to serve newspapers in Europe -- the Associated Press
GmbH in Berlin and Associated Press Ltd. in London. |
| 1932 |
The kidnapped infant son of aviation
hero Charles Lindbergh is found dead in Hopewell, N.J.
AP's Frank Jamieson scores a beat and wins the Pulitzer
Prize for his comprehensive reporting throughout the 11-week
search for the child. |
| 1933 |
The "A" wire, AP's main news wire, is converted
from a Morse to a Teletype circuit, allowing AP to transmit
the national news report at 66 words per minute.
The Associated Press Managing Editors Association (APME)
is formed as an industry association dedicated to the
improvement, advancement and promotion of journalism by
AP and its member newspapers. |
| 1935 |
AP Wirephoto, the world's first wire service for photographs,
is launched, making it possible for newspapers to receive
pictures on the day they are taken, rather than by mail.
The first AP photo sent by wire depicts the crash of a
small plane in New York's Adirondack Mountains. |
| 1936 |
AP starts an annual poll of sports
writers with the Top 10, later Top 25, college football
teams. The unofficial rankings make football a top college
sport. |
| 1939 |
Louis P. Lochner, chief of bureau, Berlin, wins the
Pulitzer Prize for his reporting from Nazi Germany. (see
more on AP’s Pulitzer Prize winners at www.ap.org/pulitzer). |
| 1941 |
In January, AP's radio wire
is launched, and AP enters the broadcasting age. The
radio wire serves radio station members with written
reports via teletype that are read on the air.
On December 7, AP’s Eugene Burns in Honolulu sees
Japanese planes dropping bombs and phones the San Francisco
bureau. After dictating a paragraph, the phone is cut
off by U.S. officials, and his bulletin never makes
the wires. Nearly an hour later, the White House announces
the attack to AP and other news agencies in Washington.
The next day, AP's American staffers in Germany, including
Berlin bureau chief Louis P. Lochner, are rounded up
and held at Bad Nauheim for several months before being
exchanged for Germans citizens detained in the United
States. At the same time, AP staffers are among those
Americans arrested by the Japanese and interned. |
1944
D-Day |
On D-Day, AP assigns 18 writers and photographers to
the invasion forces at Normandy. The group includes Ruth
Cowan of Washington, who is assigned to an American hospital
for stories on the wounded. AP’s Don Whitehead barely
survives his fourth amphibious landing after being pinned
down with the U.S. Infantry at Omaha Beach. Amid many
such close calls, only one AP man is slightly injured. |
| 1945 |
AP war correspondent Joe Morton is executed, along
with nine American and four British officers, by the
Nazis at Mauthausen concentration camp. Morton is the
only known journalist to have been executed by the Axis
powers during World War II.
AP Paris bureau chief Edward Kennedy defies an Allied
Headquarters news blackout to report Germany’s
surrender, touching off a bitter episode that leads
to his eventual dismissal by the AP. Kennedy argued
that he was reporting what German radio had already
broadcast.
AP war photographer Joe Rosenthal photographs the Marines
raising the U.S. flag on Mount Suribachi on the island
of Iwo Jima, a Pulitzer Prize-winning picture and one
many consider the most famous photograph of the 20th
century (see more on AP’s Pulitzer Prize winners
at www.ap.org/pulitzer). |
| 1946 |
AP's German News Service is revived from Frankfurt.
AP war correspondent Wes Gallagher scores a beat with
the verdicts in the Nazi war crimes trials when he bolts
from the courtroom at Nuremberg and races 100 yards to
a phone line being held open by his wife, Betty. Gallagher
led the coverage of the trials, along with Pulitzer Prize
winners Dan DeLuce and Louis P. Lochner. |
| 1950 |
Leonard Kirschen, AP's correspondent
in Bucharest, is arrested and imprisoned by Romanian
communist authorities. He serves 10 years of a 25-year
sentence for alleged spying before his release in 1960.
Following his release, he works in AP's London bureau
as a commodities reporter, specializing in the coffee
trade.
Winner in 1943 of the first AP Pulitzer
for photos, Frank Noel is captured by North Korean communist
soldiers during the Korean War. In captivity, Noel uses
a camera that is secretly delivered to him to take exclusive
photos of other prisoners at his POW camp. He is freed
August 14, 1953.
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