Berlin  The Macau Post, published in China for the former Portuguese colony, is one of German Press Agency dpa's many customers around the world.

When the editors of the Macau Post decide on the day's content, they scan material sent by dpa's English-language service from other parts of the Portuguese-speaking world: East Timor, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique and of course Portugal.

News from these regions is of great interest in Macao, reflecting not just the province's own post-colonial concerns but also its historical parallels with other countries.

In 1949, when dpa was established, the news agency was not primarily concerned with providing Brazilian news stories to Macao.

The agency was launched after World War II, as the Nazi propaganda machines fell silent and Germans found themselves hungry for news in a desolate media landscape.

Allied press officers began to fill the void, but soon found young journalists, untainted by the war, to launch regional news services which later grew together to become dpa.

International coverage began with dpa's first foreign correspondent, Brigitte Krueger, who had been reporting from London since 1948 for dpa's predecessor, German Press Service (dpd).

Krueger's salary, legend has it, was paid by the British military administration in occupied Germany.

It was in 1949, too, that dpa began broadcasting a German-language short-wave radio service, taken over from dpd.

After this came airmail delivery, in four languages, which took days or even weeks to reach news desks around the world. These were the forerunners of dpa's foreign-language services today.

The network of foreign correspondents grew, initially to report world affairs for German news outlets.

The agency's first Moscow correspondent, Walter Brell, appointed in 1956, had to deal with Stalinist censorship and the ubiquitous secret service.

For ten years dpa's man in Beijing, Hans-Joachim Bargmann, was the only German editor in Mao Tse-tung's China. He was regularly courted by German business leaders, who scented opportunities in China but knew nothing of the conditions in the country.

In 1951 and 1957, dpa struck agreements with the West German government in Bonn to expand the agency's correspondent network and foreign-language services.

Until 1960, the agency could also count on a German industry subsidy. Increasingly however, dpa's international reporting service had to learn to stand on its own two legs as external funding was withdrawn.

When, in 1988, a partnership with the US news agency upi came to an end, dpa was finally left to its own devices for its foreign-news reporting.

By this stage, dpa's foreign language services were fully operational.

As well as the English service, which started as a short-wave wire for Asia, the company also set up a French service aimed at the African market (which wound down 15 years later), a Spanish service and, in 1968, dpa's Arabic service.

The newest addition to dpa's language services is the Turkish service, launched in the spring of 2009.

Today, more than 300 journalists work for dpa abroad, amongst them 60 German editors either dispatched from Germany or hired locally.

Their task is both simple and colossal: don't miss anything relevant - report everything that is worth reporting.

It is a 24/7 job, summarised by dpa photographer Maurizio Gambarini, who was in Iraq during the 2003 invasion: "Sometimes you have to give everything you have got to get the best picture for the agency."

dpa's foreign correspondents face an upward struggle against seemingly all-powerful Anglo-American news networks and hugely subsidized French competitors.

Nevertheless, dpa's reach is growing. The company supplies roughly 95 per cent of the German market and around 700 customers abroad, including 40 national news agencies who translate dpa's material and become multipliers of dpa news in their own countries.

Figures vary as to how many people receive dpa news daily, with estimates between 430 million and one billion. Within 60 years, dpa has to become the fourth-largest news agency worldwide.

In many parts of the world, including South America, South-East Asia and the Middle East, dpa is as much of a household name as in Germany.

Consumers say they value dpa for its political neutrality, its factual accuracy, its analytical background and the approachability of its staff - achievements which are to be celebrated as the media industry weathers its latest crisis. (dpa)