And it has been good to see you filling in some of the details of how the compensation works, and especially how the ol' Press Release game is played at some places!
I write an article for the local paper, which is an independent, but does have a contractual relationship with AP. AS part of my contract, [...]
I'm not a lawyer, and I haven't looked at an AP agreement in ages (never been a member of AP, either, and I spit on their Style Manual ;-), so I could only speculate.
Look, for example, at the WaPo notice: "The Associated Press is entitled exclusively to use for republication of all news dispatches credited to it or not otherwise credited in this paper and all local news of spontaneous origin published herein."
Depending on what you write, it could be that you would be cutting into the exclusivity clause for the AP--perhaps the independent paper would have to be sure that your permission to publish on FR didn't conflict. (Is the story "local news of spontaneous origin" or what?)
If the AP agreement allowed such deals as you describe, then what would prevent a paper from giving blanket permission for reprinting to everyone--reducing their potential contribution to the AP collective?
IOW, IMO, it's very complex.
Exactly!
Nothing I have ever done for that paper was really worthy of posting here, it was really THAT local. LOL!
That press release crapola drives me insane..and I haven't worked in a news room in over 20 years, and it was done back that. Granted, I was in small market radio and we had shoestring budgets and staff, but it is so very obvious to me whn I see it being done on the national level.
I worked with a great AP regional guy for about 3 years. He trusted me to back up whatever I fed him. One evening he calls me and starts ripping me a new one about a fatal fire story that I had "written." Oh I had written the story, because I had been on the scene, but no where in any of my coverage had I mentioned the name of the victim as it wasn't official, also I never called AP with the story. While he was chewing me out for being irresponsible and I was trying to explain the Fire Chief came storming in to chew me out for the exact same thing because my AP guy had called him to confirm.
Long story short, the owner of the station had taken my copy, added a sentence with the victims name and called AP and gave me the credit for the story.
It took an awful lot of work for me to regain the trust of those 2 men, for something I had not done.
22 years later the memory of that fiasco still stings. AP was far more trustworthy back then.