Cooperative news agency , the oldest and largest in the U.S. and long the largest in the world.
Its beginnings trace to 1848, when six New York City newspapers pooled their efforts to finance a telegraphic relay of foreign news brought by ships to Boston. In 1892 the modern AP was set up under the laws of Illinois; several years later it moved to New York. Its restrictive controls on new memberships were ended with federal antitrust prosecution in the 1940s. AP was the first agency to devote a news wire to sports coverage (1946), and it distributes business news through a partnership with Dow Jones & Co., Inc. More than 15,000 organizations worldwide obtain news, photographs, and illustrations from the agency. The AP Stylebook has become a standard in many journalistic organizations.