The AP is NOT Dead, Not By A Longshot

I recieved an e-mail newsletter from WebProNews, with the subject line "AP Is Dead ... Killed By Blogs & Aggregation", and I thought, immediately, that there was breaking news about the AP. Having just photographed the head of the AP, Tom Curley, a few nights prior, and him having made no mention of this made me skeptical. So, I read on.

The author, Rich Ord, CEO of iEntry, said:

Old media is epitomized by no news source more than the Associated Press. Literally thousands of journalists are employed around the world to bring current event coverage to readers of thousands of newspapers and their online sites.

Yes, Rich, that's because there are literally thousands of places around the world where news is happening, every day, sometimes, in the same city at the same time, so we need more than once person in each city.

(Continued after the Jump)

He goes on to say:

In the pre-Internet days the AP had little competition beyond a few other news syndicators like Reuters and UPI. The AP's world has now changed forever with the advent of blogs and news aggregation sites.

Blogs are the new "AP" journalists and aggregation services which started with NewsLinx.com in 1996 (founded by me!) and
which now include Google News, Topix, Techmeme, WebProWire and the new Blogrunner have made the AP much less relevant.

No, Rich, blogs are not the new AP. Blogs are an unfettered collection of postings by people with unknown agendas. In fact, WebProNews wrote about this very fact in this article which noted that the photographer/author team were hired to write positive blog pieces about a major retailer. I can't see how they can critisize the blogosphere in one breath, and then suggest it's the new AP in a year later. It can't be both ways. The AP is reporting - without agenda - on the news of the day. One can argue all you want about if they're conservative or liberal, or middle-of-the-road, but their overarching agenda is to take as unbiased look as possible on the news of the day.

WebProNews criticized the AP "the AP is suing Moreover for of all things... linking to AP stories. Does the AP not realize that winning this suit would result in less readers of their stories?" The AP isn't complaining about more people reading their stories, they are complaining about people generating revenue from links and ads alongside the links to their stories, which are not generating any income for the AP or it's members, but are for the link farms that are generating income.

They go on to write:

The Associated Press model of news is dead ... dead as can be. It is a business model that pays reporters to travel and write stories and then syndicate those stories to traditional news organizations.

Wait, you said at the outset "The AP is Dead", now you're just saying the model is? Which is it? Earlier in the post you cited Curley's remarks in a speech a few days ago

"We must take bold, decisive steps to secure the audiences and funding to support journalism's essential role in both our economy and democracy, or find ourselves on an ugly path to obscurity."

I think Tom Curley gets it. He wants to evolve. Heck, the guy ran USA Today when everyone joked about it as a fake newspaper before coming around to it.

Now, if we could just get the AP to increase their assignment rates, and maybe use the pay-per-play model I suggested at the end of What The Writers Strike Means to You, we'd all benefit from this new media we're (some of us are) thriving in.

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