The AP seems to feel insulated from accountability because it is a wholesaler and not a retailer. The AP survives because of all the small newspapers which need a source to fill space on regional, national and world events, but those newspaper are dying off as newspaper readership steadily declines. It will not be long before we put those boys and girls in a museum along with broadcast network news and the fossils of Cronkite, Jennings, Brokaw, and Rather. It will be sooner than they think, who would have thought that Fox News could so humiliate the broadcast and cable networks in the ratings battle for the Republican Convention.
They're going to continue to feel insulated until the retailers stop buying from that wholesaler. It isn't just the paper and ink newspapers that get their stories from AP. It's news outlets like Yahoo that need to hear from us too.
It's not just small newspapers that rely on AP; everybody does -- the biggest newspapers and the Web, including FR. Eliminate all wire services, and we'll back at guessing at the outlines of the shadows in the cave.