Wire service

A news agency, such as the Associated Press or Reuters, that sells its stories to other outlets to publish.

Last updated September 28, 2026.

Definition

What Wire service means

A wire service, or news agency, gathers news and distributes it to subscribing newspapers, broadcasters, and websites, which publish the stories under the agency's name. AP and Reuters are the largest in English; Bloomberg runs a financial news service for its terminal customers.

Subscribers receive stories through licensed feeds, often before or alongside the agency's own website. Those feeds are priced by contract and come with republishing rights. The agencies' public websites carry many of the same stories for readers, without those rights.

Clair's Reuters, AP, and Bloomberg APIs read the public websites, not the licensed feeds: section and search listings, then one article per call.

In the data

How it appears in a response

GET /v1/search?engine=ap_news&q=hurricane&sort=newest&page=1 · results.0

{
  "position": 1,
  "title": "Powerful Hurricane Polo drenches Mexico’s coast as Nolo takes aim at Hawaii",
  "url": "https://apnews.com/article/hurricane-polo-mexico-nolo-hawaii-a036e08f59c3f3842aaba2ee69bd9d37",
  "published_at": "2026-09-24T08:20:28.000Z",
  "authors": [],
  "content_type": "article",
  "premium": false
}

One result from an AP News search. From a recorded Associated Press API response.

Subscribe to the API you need.

Each Clair API is its own monthly request quota. Unused requests expire. Every API has a free tier to try it.

Get API Key →Compare plans

Glossary