Deutsche Presse-Agentur


Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH is a German news agency founded in 1949. Based in Hamburg, it has grown to be a major worldwide operation serving print media, radio, television, online, mobile phones, and national news agencies. News is available in German, English, Spanish, and Arabic.
The dpa is the largest press agency in Germany. Along with the main office in Hamburg, there is a central news office in Berlin. The dpa has offices in some hundred countries, including twelve regional German bureaus and fifty-five additional offices in Germany.

History

The dpa was founded as a co-operative in Goslar on 18 August 1949, succeeding the Deutsche Nachrichtenagentur and Süddeutsche News Agency, and became a limited liability company in 1951. Fritz Sänger was the first editor-in-chief. He served as managing director until 1955 and as managing editor until 1959. The first transmission occurred at 6 a.m. on 1 September 1949.
In 1986, the dpa founded Global Media Services, which bought its competitor Cartography Service GmbH in 1988.
In 2010, the editorial headquarters moved to the historical newspaper district of Berlin, location of the former newsroom for Hamburg, Frankfurt, and Berlin. The corporate headquarters remain in Hamburg, along with subsidiaries news aktuell GmbH, dpa-media technology GmbH, and dpa-infocom GmbH.

Services

The dpa Basic Service produces over eight hundred daily reports that appear in almost every German newspaper and news service. The dpa Photo Service releases about twelve hundred photos daily.
The dpa World News Service releases German news stories in English from Berlin, Spanish from Buenos Aires and Madrid, and Arabic from Cairo. In 2009 the dpa launched a dual-language service in Turkish and German but abandoned it after only nine months.
The dpa cooperates with other news agencies, including Austria Presse-Agentur, DPA-AFX Business News, and Schweizerische Depeschenagentur.