Media monitoring service

A media monitoring service, a press clipping service, clipping service, or a clipping bureau, as known in earlier times, provides clients with copies of media content, which is of specific interest to them and subject to changing demand; what they provide may include documentation, content, analysis, or editorial opinion, specifically or widely.

These services tend to specialize their coverage by subject, industry, size, geography, publication, journalist, or editor. The printed sources, which could be readily monitored, greatly expanded with the advent of telegraphy and submarine cables in the mid- to late-19th century; the various types of media now available proliferated in the 20th century, with the development of radio, television, the photocopier and the World Wide Web. Though media monitoring is generally used for capturing content or editorial opinion, it also may be used to capture advertising content.

Media monitoring services have been variously termed over time, as new players entered the market, new forms of media were created, and as new uses from available content developed. Alternative terms for these monitoring services include information logistics, media intelligence, and media information services.

Since mass media traditionally was limited solely to print media, naturally the monitoring was also limited to these media. The first press clipping agency in London was established in 1852 by Henry Romeike, partnering with newsdealer Curtice. An agency named "L'Argus de la presse" was established in Paris in 1879 by Alfred Cherie, who offered a press-clipping service to Parisian actors, enabling them to buy reviews of their work rather than purchasing the whole newspaper.

The National Press Intelligence Company began in New York in 1885. More than a dozen clipping services were in operation by 1899. The services opening up across the United States formed a cooperative network to increase their range. By 1932, the Romeike company and Luce's Press Clipping Bureau shared 80% of the clipping business in the United States.

Initially, press clipping services primarily served "vanity" purposes: actors, tycoons, and socialites eager to read what newspapers had written about them. By the 1930s, the bulk of the clipping subscriptions were for big business. Government agencies have been subscribers, as have other newspapers.

Early clipping services employed women to scan periodicals for mentions of specific names or terms. The marked periodicals were then cut out by men and pasted to dated slips. Women would then sort those slips and clippings to be sent to the services' clients.

As radio and later television broadcasting were introduced in the 20th century, press clipping agencies began to expand their services into the monitoring of these broadcast media, and this task was greatly facilitated by the development of commercial audio and video tape recording systems in the 1950s and 1960s.^{[citation needed]}