Schwedler was chief editor of the German government-owned news
agency, Transocean, from 1918 to his death in May 1936. Transocean had developed from a news agency founded in 1913 with the explicit purpose of spreading German news overseas. This became especially urgent after World War I, when the news agency cartel contract between Reuters, Agence Havas, Associated Press and the German Wolffs Telegraphisches Bureau (WTB) was renegotiated such that the WTB was only responsible for news within Germany’s borders. (…)

Histories of news agencies have, quite correctly, emphasized the fundamental link between the spread of the telegraph and the foundation of news agencies in the mid-nineteenth century. The “Big Three” news agencies were all founded in this period: Agence Havas in 1835, the WTB in 1849, and Reuters in 1851.