Posted on 10/12/2008 6:59:43 AM PDT by george76
Since the Associated Press announced its controversial rate change last year, many newspapers have started considering other content options. And things are not likely to calm down any time soon.
A handful of dailies — including several who admit their AP rates actually fell — have given notice to drop the service, editors in several states are forging content-sharing alliances, and Politico and PA SportsTicker are quickly positioning themselves to help replace the 160-year-old news cooperative in daily news pages.
"AP is going to lose newspapers, it is a question of how many," says Editor Dean Miller of the Post Register in Idaho Falls, which several months ago gave its required two years' notice that it plans to drop the news service. "My guess is most of their losses will be in medium and small markets."
Since the beginning of the year, when the backlash began against AP's rate change, more than a half-dozen dailies have given notice, including The Bakersfield Californian, the Star Tribune of Minneapolis, and Washington's Yakima Herald-Republic and The Wenatchee World.
"I think the AP regional report has fallen off in quantity, and in some ways, quality,"...
"It is mostly a concern about content." At least one paper, the Spokesman-Review of Spokane, Wash., is challenging AP's two-year-notice requirement and plans to stop using and paying for the wire service by the end of the year. "The legal point here is that we are not canceling a contract, we are declining to sign a new contract," says Editor Steve Smith, who admits a $30,000 expected savings in 2009, but says the remaining $375,000 AP bill is too high.
"More editors are feeling disenfranchised and disregarded by AP."
(Excerpt) Read more at editorandpublisher.com ...
The truth is that these many newspapers would be helped by having a variety of different voices writing their own articles rather than publishing that same old stuff AP boilerplate readers can get from a gazillion of other online and offline sources.
I’d be more inclined to read local research on an issue than I would read the regurgitated spew that is called “news” in this country.
AP’s gotten so bad, papers might as well go with PRNewswire - besides, it’s free. And no less biased than AP...
IT IS CRITICAL that a fair and balanced newswire service arise to compete with the AP.
A professional news service as an alternative to the corrupted A.P. would have the potential to turn around the free-fall in newspaper circulation and revenue.
I don’t understand why they don’t buy story by story from UPI, Reuters, etc.
Alan Mutter has been saying for a long time that the business model for the AP is not workable long term, with AP selling its stories on Yahoo, Google, MyWay and its own website. Why do people need a dead tree paper for news they can get online?
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