... I see not why they wouldn’t pursue this strategy.
Maybe it sounds too far-fetched even for AP and their fellow travelers in the news business, as far as the outcome is concerned.
Besides, they may be opposed in these efforts by their “news” competitors who see AP’s loss as their potential gain, not even counting their entertainment media “cousins” that might feel the potential legal or financial danger.
Faced with the ad revenues and subscriptions to newspapers (their primary distribution channel) falling drastically - in part because of recession, but having started even before due to advances in communication technologies - they are now trying to double-dip and charge the recipients / end-users of “news” directly, which is doomed to fail.
The desperation efforts to double-dip and get more revenue sources and charge more for now extremely overdistributed product (”news”) have come up in last month’s meetings in the annual Allen & Co. Sun Valley Media Conference.
First, IAC/InterActive Corp.’s Barry Diller came out with a trial balloon that the news or information is valuable and expensive commodity to produce and therefore cannot not be “free” (whatever that means) and that “news companies” will have to start charging for the product (as if they are giving it away now). That fell flat. Now News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch came out with exactly the same notion, to stoke the fires of the initiative by putting it into more concrete terms.
I doubt that attempt will be successful. Except for niche and specialty products, e.g. industry or financial magazines or newsletters, hardly anyone is going to pay directly for generic news which are already sponsored by advertisement.
“News” can still be profitable business. Just because they cannot adjust and adapt their business model to new technology and make as much money through advertisements as they used to, doesn’t mean that they will be able to charge more for the same stale product which now has a half-life of hours, at best. More likely these misguided attempts will result in losing even more in advertisement. They should try working on delivering a better product instead, something people would want to buy.