The collection of news dispatches of the Washington, D.C., Bureau of the Associated Press spans the period 1915-1930 and consists of 375 volumes (387,082 images), housed in 254 boxes, the contents of which provide an unbroken chronology of world and national events as reported by the news agency.

While newspapers have long been a part of the national discourse, even predating the American Revolution, an explosion in news services occurred in the 1840s and 1850s.  At the time, New York served as the nerve center of news gathering and dissemination. Newspapers in New York joined forces and formed the New York Associated Press in 1846.  Other regional associations soon followed such as the Western Associated Press and the Southern Associated Press.

Though the organization had established correspondents in several cities across the U.S. prior to 1856, the Associated Press underwent a reorganization to establish more defined rules of procedure for the gathering of news. Following this reorganization in 1856, the A.P.’s first two formal bureaus to be recognized were in Washington D.C. and Albany, New York, the former of which is represented in this collection. Improvements in telegraphy in the second half of the nineteenth century increased the AP’s presence and reach. In Chicago in 1892, the AP consolidated its various regional associations through incorporation. Both technological innovations and the centralization of the organization enabled the AP to expand from a collection of regional associations into a nationally recognized news service.

Topics that appear in this chronologically arranged collection include but are not limited to World War One, women’s suffrage, the Jazz Age, and the outbreak of the Great Depression.

A finding aid (PDF and HTML) to the Associated Press News Dispatches is available online with links to the chronologically arranged digital content on this site.