Media: Explaining a "Flash" story

 

     Back in the days when the news from The Associated Press was distributed in physical form to member newspapers and broadcasters, it arrived in newsrooms on machines like this one. "Wire" machines were as much a part of the newsrooms I worked in as microphones.

     They were a kind of typewriter that would type stories onto rolls of paper 24/7, 365 days a year. 

     When an especially important story arrived,a bell in the machine would ring. The number of rings depended on the importance of the story.  As an AP background story about the system explains:

"A flash is our first word of a breaking story of transcendent importance, a story we expect to be one of the very top stories of the year. We average one or two flashes a year. They’re never more than one sentence, and frequently very condensed: “Bells ringing signaling election of a pope.”

In the old days when AP subscribers received news over teletype machines, a flash rang a series of bells on the machine, sending editors rushing to see what was happening. Usually there were 10 to 15 bells for a flash, but AP teletype operators had to type a “bell” symbol to trigger each ring, and in the excitement of a big story the number could vary."

 

I'm writing about it now because we had a "FLASH" story the other day....the first one  can remember in a long time The previous Flash was identical except for the date and time:

In a ‘flash’: Alerting news of the president’s impeachment

Dec. 19, 2019, by John Daniszewski

At 8:34 p.m. ET on Wednesday, AP pushed out the news, “President Donald Trump impeached by US House of Representatives.”

 

And another flash came on Wednesday...Trump indicted again.