system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How the Associated Press works.

How do things "get picked up by the AP"?
gpt
Journalism major here.

The AP is like one big newspaper. It has a lot of writers who go around the world and write stories about everything that goes on in the world. Those stories are then bought by newspapers who run them instead of having their own writers make the stories.

When a big story happens where the AP doesn't know about it, the local writer writes his or her story, and when it becomes national or world news, the AP will purchase that story from the writer. The Joplin tornado a year ago is a perfect example of this.

Hope that helped!