News eventually the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS). The Chinese Communist Party created its news agency, the Red China News Agency, in 1931; its primary responsibilities were the "Red China" newspaper and the internal "Reference News". In 1937, the Party renamed the agency "Xinhua", New China. Xinhua became the official news agency of the People's Republic of China in 1949. These agencies touted their ability to distill events into "minute globules of news", 20–30 word summaries which conveyed the essence of new developments. Unlike newspapers, and contrary to the sentiments of some of their reporters, the agencies sought to
TASS TV and radio stations and over a thousand foreign media outlets. The news agency ran one of the biggest networks of correspondents in the world – 682 offices in the country and 94 bureaus abroad, with reporters in 110 countries. At its peak it employed nearly 5000 people including close to 2,000 journalists and photo correspondents. TASS was organized with five Main Editorial Boards for Union Information, Foreign Information, Socialist Countries, Information for Foreign Countries, Photo information, supplemented by a Main Directorate of Communications. In 1961 Ria Novosti was created to supplement TASS, mainly in foreign reporting and human-interest stories.