persbureau

Persbureau is the Dutch term for a news agency—an organization that gathers, verifies, writes, and distributes news and related content to subscribing media outlets. A persbureau aims to supply timely national and international reporting, often operating around the clock with reporters, editors, photographers, and video crews. Content is distributed to newspapers, broadcasters, magazines, and online publishers that license or syndicate the material.

Typical offerings include text articles, photographs, video clips, graphics, and sometimes translations or summaries. Agencies provide ready-to-publish material with headlines, captions, and metadata, and they offer licensing terms for reuse. They may also offer breaking-news services, feeds, and application programming interfaces to integrate content into clients' systems.

Organizationally, a persbureau maintains a newsroom and multiple bureaus—domestic and international—to cover events. Revenue generally comes from subscriptions and licensing fees paid by media clients; some agencies are owned by media groups, cooperatives of publishers, or private companies. In many Dutch-speaking regions, the Algemeen Nederlands Persbureau (ANP) is the leading national persbureau in the Netherlands, while Belga serves a similar role in Belgium.

Historically, press agencies emerged in the 19th century to speed the distribution of news via telegraph. They contributed to standardization of reporting and the spread of international news networks. In the digital era, persbureaus continue to adapt with online distribution, multimedia content, and global news collaboration, while facing competition from social media and changing licensing models.