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 ...
AP was created by newspapers
Isn’t AP a not for profit? Given their overt editorializing in favor of Obama at this point, perhaps a complaint to the IRS over their 501 status might be in order.
We need a news service that TELLS THE TRUTH to replace AP.
We will probably see the surviving fishwraps drive wooden stakes into the heart of the AP monster on a weekly if not daily basis.
These actions will not be restricted to fishwraps. We will probably see many types of non profits similiar to AP get whacked as our economy goes sideways.
If you have local tourist boards/offices which have become bloated pools of lazy liberals getting a paycheck in your community that have been financed by donations of local businesses watch how the businesses will handled these bloated do nothings. You will see actions ranging locking the doors of the tourist bureaus to evictions of the do nothings by the business community and mass firings.
Editors say using Politico copy with that of traditional news services such as McClatchy-Tribune, Hearst, or The New York Times News Service could fill the AP void.
These alternatives are more subtle and intelligent than AP, which is stuffed full of blatant and obvious liars. But they are still all leftists.
I think that that will continue to be the case as long as our universities and journalism schools and the news media themselves are all stuffed full of brainwashed leftists.
AP is THE root cause of much of the left-worshiping bias media in America, because it usually provides the first blush of many a national story. (which is what sticks in our minds)
By time the truth, gets its boots on, the AP (and the public's collective mind has moved on to the next story.
Ironically, the only counter to the Democrat-loving AP is the DrudgeReport, which also provides the first blush to many a national story.
God Bless Matt Drudge, because he is the rock solid counter to the slanted AP.
Could someone who understands the news business from the inside analyze this for us?
I’d like to know if this really is the beginning of the end for the monopoly that liberals have had over the media.
I’d like to think that we can get back to reporting that is not so agenda-driven.
Same thought here. Politico is a little less blatant but still leftist.
Would actually be fun as well.
They should go out of business. That would be the best thing for America.
“We need a news service that TELLS THE TRUTH to replace AP.”
Amen.
Boycott AP!
“God Bless Matt Drudge, because he is the rock solid counter to the slanted AP.”
You have a rich fantasy life. If only it were so.
Since the Ossociated Press announced its controversial total support for the Obama campaign after Sarah Palin was tapped for the Republican vice-presidential slot in late August, many news consumers have started ignoring and/or deriding their “content”.
Does AP choose the left wing bias of the news, or does it merely redistribute the left wing bias of a few leading newspapers? Do they get 100 pro-Obama stories and 100 pro-Bush stories but spike the pro-Bush stories, or do its affiliates provide 100 pro-Obama stories and 1 pro-Bush story which AP distributes?
I really don't know if AP is the cause or the effect of the MSM's left wing bias.
The website needs freeper help posting information now!
Do you think???
As in honesty??
"Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved."
Both actually.
The Associated Press (AP) has an office-newsroom in most major metropolitan cities across America, and can thus cover the stories IT chooses with its own 'in-house' reporters.
But, like you alluded to, the AP gets most of its wire copy from local newspapers and media organizations which willingly joins the AP and pays for the right to use its wire copy.
But written into those contracts: AP has the right to change, edit, and otherwise distort any story it picks up from a local newspaper.
Likewise, the newspapers have the right to change, edit, and otherwise distort any article it takes from the AP wire service.
I've been in newsrooms many times where the editor of a local newspaper will scroll through the AP wire service until it finds a story that has the right quotes and 'distortion' .... and that local newspaper then "writes around" those quotes to make its OWN version of what happened.
Then it notes at the bottom of the newspaper story "The AP contributed to this story" or something like that.
Likewise, the 'in house' AP reporters can select from hundreds or thousands of local newspaper stories ... and will often do follow up stories on only those which fits in with the AP agenda, which is basically Democrat-good and Republican bad.
Rush Limbaugh is good at rooting out the REAL biased AP reporters, and often makes fools of them on his show.
Most casual readers just assume that the AP is down the middle, and take its stories as credible when they are anything but.
If God came down today and said "Edit35, you can make one change in the American media to bring some balance.... I would close down AP and open up an entirely new Fox News type of organization which is not obsessed at making the lib-Dems look like angels, and the GOP look like demons.
The entire political landscape would be changed within months, I am certain.
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Do you know how many times Drudge has push legitimate stories (favorable to the GOP) into the national spotlight, after the AP and other left wing organizations refused to cover them.
It is astounding how much influence Drudge has ... as evidenced by the many stories the left outlets (NYTimes, WaPost, and others) has done admitting as much.
Does Drudge occasionally do a story unfavorable to the Republicans, or President Bush, or conservatives?? Yes, certainly.
But he at least presents both sides, which is more than you can say about any of the major networks, or the major metropolitan news organizations.
I wonder why, in the age of RSS feeds, emailing lists, password protected image libraries, and the like, why AP is still around. All newspapers could feed all others, and there’d be no need for the biased middleperson. Thanks geo.
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