The AP is the largest and the oldest newsgathering organization in the world. It supplies more than 1,550 newspapers and 5,000 radio and television stations in the U.S. with national and international news. The AP—founded in 1848—is a not-for-profit news cooperative, owned by its thousands of members. AP's news originates in its vast network of 241 bureaus around the world in which 3,700 staff members produce an average of 20 million words and 1,000 photos a day. Most stories begin on state or regional news wires. If a story is seen to have more than regional interest it is sent to AP's New York headquarters where the story is edited and placed on the Data Stream report.

Members of the AP also contribute news stories to the AP via their local bureaus.

The wire service supplies photographs and graphics to members, and the AP Network News is a full-service radio network.

AP also distributes news online via The WIRE, http://wire.ap.org, which is a 24-hour news service of headlines, story summaries that link to full stories, audio news summaries from the radio news feed, photos and a search capability.

"I suppose that when I go to the hereafter and stand at the Golden Gate, the first person I shall meet will be a correspondent of the Associated Press."—Mahatma Gandhi, on meeting an AP reporter at a remote railway station in western India after his release from prison.