Official announcements are cheap to get — and slow to turn into stories
Government departments publish a steady stream of announcements: new funding, rule changes, appointments, consultations, safety notices. The material is public and often free to reuse, which makes it one of the cheapest sources a small newsroom has. The cost is time. Someone has to watch dozens of websites, work out which releases matter, turn bureaucratic prose into readable copy, check the figures, and add the correct licence line. For a newsroom of two or three people, that work usually loses out to everything else on the list. A feed that does the collecting and the first edit for you changes that arithmetic.
What BLINK Wire provides
BLINK Wire is BlinkHub's news feed for newsrooms. Documents are delivered in the IPTC ninjs format over a pull API, or straight into WordPress through the free BLINK Wire Importer plugin. UK, EU and New Zealand items are rewritten as news copy in British English; every figure and quotation is checked against the original release, and items that do not match are held back for an editor rather than sent out. US and Korean items are edited press releases, not rewritten stories. Every document carries the source's licence notice and, where available, a link to the original release.
The five markets available now
gb — UK government departments on gov.uk, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. eu — European Commission press releases, under CC BY 4.0. nz — the New Zealand Government (beehive.govt.nz), under CC BY 4.0. us — US federal, state and city releases; US federal works are in the public domain, while terms for state and city material vary, so read the licence notice on each item. kr — about 240 South Korean public bodies, in Korean, with around 2,000 items on a normal weekday. Korean items issued under embargo appear only after the embargo time, which makes the kr market particularly useful for Korean-language outlets abroad.
How to get it, step by step
1. Create a free BlinkHub account with your email address or Google account — there is no approval queue. 2. In the dashboard, open "News feed API" and register your site. 3. Prove that you run the site: on WordPress, paste the verification code into the plugin's "Verification code" field; on any other system, add a meta tag to the <head> of your home page or upload a small text file at /.well-known/blink-wire.txt. 4. Press Verify. Your free API key is shown once — copy it then, because BlinkHub stores only a fingerprint of it. If you lose it, you can replace it from the dashboard. Before connecting anything, members can also browse the available stories by market in the dashboard. The full walkthrough is on the publishers page.
WordPress in three steps
First, install and activate the free BLINK Wire Importer plugin. Second, register your site in the dashboard, paste the verification code into the plugin, and press Verify. Third, connect the plugin with your API key and choose how it should behave. By default, stories are saved as drafts so an editor can review them; you can switch to publishing immediately. The plugin checks for new stories every 15, 30 or 60 minutes, adds the licence line and a link to the original release to each post, and reports the post URL back so the source can see where its material ran. Paid releases from organisations are always labelled "Press release", and you can switch them off entirely.
Other systems: the API, or paid setup
If you do not run WordPress, your system can pull documents from the API on its own schedule, much as it would read an RSS feed, but with structured ninjs fields instead of loose HTML. The endpoints and fields are documented in the API documentation. If you would rather have it done for you, there is optional one-time paid setup, excluding VAT: $49 for WordPress, $149 for a standard CMS connection (Ghost, Drupal, Joomla and similar), and from $390 for custom or in-house systems. Scope and price are confirmed with you before any work starts.
Licence and attribution: what you must keep
The material is free to reuse because its licences allow it — and those licences come with conditions. Keep the licence notice that arrives with each document: the Open Government Licence v3.0 for UK items, CC BY 4.0 for EU and New Zealand items, and whatever the notice says for US and Korean items. Keep the link to the original release where one is provided. Do not remove the "Press release" label from paid releases. If you edit the text, the attribution still has to stay with it.
Good practice: add what only you can add
Do not present wire copy as your own reporting; a byline such as "staff" on an unchanged government release misleads readers. The better habit is to use the feed as a starting point. Add a local angle: which schools, businesses or neighbourhoods an announcement affects, a comment from someone in your area, or how it compares with last year. There is a practical reason too. Google's guidance on syndicated content notes that when the same text appears on many sites, the copies compete with each other and only one may be shown. Local context and original reporting give readers — and search engines — a reason to choose your page. No feed can promise traffic or rankings; what you add is what makes the difference.
The limits, honestly
The free plan covers up to 300 full articles a month once your site is verified; listing available stories is free, and refetching an article does not count again. Larger volumes and organisation licences are quoted through connect@blinkhub.net. Photos are not included for UK, EU and New Zealand items. Korean items are in Korean, and there is no translation yet. US and Korean items are edited press releases rather than rewritten news stories, so plan more editing time for them.