AAP's main focus is on breaking news but is also known for its court reporting, sport, political coverage, feature stories, and photographs.

[4] This group successfully lobbied the Government of Victoria to pass the first copyright legislation of its kind in the world in 1871, protecting news material transmitted electronically for 24 hours from its first publication.

[5] Initially serving The Sun and The Herald, the service drew on the London newspaper The Times, and would be headed by Keith Murdoch from 1915 to 1921.

[6] In 1935, Murdoch brokered a merger between the two competitors to cut down costs, which established the Australian Associated Press as a not-for-profit cooperative with 14 newspaper shareholders.

[6] Its charter laid out that the service was to provide:"the most accurate and most searching information of all the world’s activities and thought without any tendency toward or opportunity for the exercise of political partisanship or bias".

In addition to its initial bureaux in London and New York, in the 1950s the AAP partnered with the Reuters telegraph agency to post AAP-Reuters correspondents in Asia.

By 1972 the AAP had correspondents in Beijing, Los Angeles, Port Moresby, Saigon (today Ho Chi Minh City), Singapore, Suva and Wellington, as well as all Australian states and territories.

[11] The AAP also closed down its Jakarta office in September 2017 after 35 years, opting to operate its Asia desk from Australia by using international newswires and freelance journalists.

[17] On 20 March 2020, it was announced that AAP's shareholders had decided to break up and shut down the newswire, saying that the service had become unsustainable in competition with free online content.

[18] However, at the last-minute before the service was set to close in June, AAP was bought by a consortium of impact investors and philanthropists led by Peter Tonagh, a former chief of News Corp and Foxtel.

[25] The newswire was bought by Acta Diurna AAP Limited, a legal entity founded by Harrington and McKinnon, the name referring to the public daily records of ancient Rome.

[29] Nick Harrington joined AAP's executive team as head of strategy and development,[22] a position he resigned from on 21 September 2020.

[30] After relaunching with fewer staff and more infrequent coverage, the AAP asked its existing customers to transition their contracts to the new company at the same rates.

[33] By the 2010s it became common practice for newspapers to republish AAP copy, with minor edits and sometimes verbatim, sometimes including an 'AAP' byline and at times omitting one.

[32] A 2009 study found that the online breaking news sections of The Daily Telegraph and The Age, were more than half unchanged AAP reports, with the remainder predominantly sourced from international newswires, and suggested errors in AAP reporting are spread and republished in a homogeneous news environment.

[35] On 5 September 2020, Emma Cowdroy the new chief executive of the AAP admitted that the company was facing significant financial challenges since its relaunch as a not-for-profit; this came about as a result of clients signing on for shorter periods awaiting the entrance of NCA Newswire, a new competitor owned by News Corp Australia a former large shareholder in the AAP, into the market when the companies non-compete clause ends in February 2021.

[38] The AAP established AAPT, a telecommunications division offering long-distance voice and data services in 1991, which was spun off and sold to Telecom New Zealand in 2000.

[35] The services were housed under the umbrella of a new company called Mediality, employing 130 staff, 95 being full-time roles, with the head office in Sydney moving into the News Corp Australia Building.