News-Record.com

I think the AP's decision to charge for online content is a step toward its demise. With free, national and international news available all over the Web (Yahoo News and Google News are but two of a gazillion robust news sites), the AP apparently believes it can stay relevant while forcing consumers (newspapers, which then pass the additional cost on to subscribers) to pay for news that's free elsewhere.

The dear old AP has its head in the sand on this one, I think.

I agree with Jason. The AP seems to be swimming against the tide on this.

I get along just fine without the AP now, and that will only improve with time.

So how "on the table" is charging online viewers for content or setting aside an "AP" pay area on the N&R site?

Charging is not on the table, Sue. Not saying it won't ever be, but we're moving toward registration but not a pay site. We haven't talked about an AP pay area, but I doubt we'd want to go in that direction, either.

Unless, of course, you guys out there WANT to pay us for online.

I think the first newspaper that begins charging for AP content will be laughed out of the business. Surely there will be at least one newspaper that will pay the AP for online content but not turn around and charge its customers. If even one site does this, no site that tries to charge will make any money off the venture.

The only newspapers that can get away with pay-for-content models are large papers with top-notch reporters and complete national and international coverage. WSJ has done a good job, and I fear The New York Times may move to a pay-only model (something they've discussed).

I thought that AP operated as a "cooperative" effort with the costs to pay for infrastructure and assets where "member" organizations did not exist.

If that were the case, why not ask other members what they think.

I subscribe to the paper to get local news and advertising. The national news is simply extra since I rely on other sources.

Maybe AP content can be password protected, with the password changed daily and printed in that day's paper. That might atleast help justify the expense that AP wants to tag on to its content.

The thing about the AP is that it's about the only thing on your site that means you will have fresh content throughout the day.

Unless you REALLY plan on ramping up on what your staff produces throughout the day in terms of breaking news -- and I mean REALLY ramp it up -- you're going to lose the source of 95 percent of your fresh content.

I would actually rather you ditch the AP and invest real resources into local news updates. But, that would cost money and likely eat up resources in the newsroom that are devoted to producing the daily newspaper.

Here's an idea: scrap the AP and take the money you would have spent on that to hire a part time reporter to work ONLY for online from 10 am to 2 p.m. each day. They do news updates only -- and don't get sucked into "projects" and "meetings" and "initiatives" -- they just write/rewrite stuff.

I have a question for all those people who say they get their national and international news from somewhere else: Where exactly do you think THAT news comes from? Yahoo, Google, even major newspapers like The New York Times and The Washington Post rely on the Associated Press for a huge chunk of their content. I just visited Yahoo, for example, and the top overall story, the top U.S. story, the top sports story, the top entertainment story and the top business story were all AP stories.

@Eric Michaels: No one is denying that Yahoo News and other online news sources get much of their stories from the AP. The point is that if just one of those news sites is willing to pay the AP's new fee for online content without passing the fee on to consumers, the AP won't sell its content to anyone else. Why would the News & Record pay thousands of dollars to publish material that can be found elsewhere?

The AP is the major source of breaking news in US media outlets but there's no reason they have to be other than inertia. I hope they cut their own throats with this policy and good riddance.

While exceptions exist, the agency is largely populated by hacks who never get on the ground to get the story anyway. Their foreign correspondents hobnob with the local elite and their "reporters" take their "facts" over the phone and fax lines, not to mention they almost always spin the news in favor of the oligarchies. They mostly wouldn't recognize investigative reporting if it stood up and bit them on the a**.

There are other news wires that do a better job. Reuters, Knight Ridder and Bloomberg spring to mind immediately and there are other lesser known ones that could easily supplant AP as the go-to group if given a chance.

What Libby said.

I agree with all the above comments. One thing that I haven't seen mentioned is: What happens to the AP when Reuters, et. al. DO NOT sell their content? Sure, the AP is the flagship news source here in the states, but Reuters is a major player. There are also others (I can only think of Howard-Scripps, right now) but none are as ubiquitous as the AP. Also, dont the big newscorps have their own services? Good stories in Knight-Ridder, Gannett and Trib papers will usually make their way across the country. Is the AP REALLY that necessary?

Using another wire service is a good idea, but probably won't work. The Tribune wire and the KR wire both don't move much news during the day.

They move a story or two, but mostly move stuff on a newspaper print cycle. So, throughout the day, there would be few updates.

The nice thing about the AP -- perhaps the only nice thing -- is that they feed continuous updates to a story throughout the day.

TRB and KR move stories that newspaper writers have written for next day publication, generally.

I imagine that Gannett is the same way....

Does this mean that the AP will pay its member papers for feature and news stories that it picks up from them? Does it also mean that AP will pay its member papers for stories that it gets from newspapers and gives to TV news? Newspapers originally founded AP.

I'm a former Knight Ridder Tribune employee, and I think KRT does a lot of things very well. But you simply can't compare the breadth of AP's feed to KRT's. Depth, yes -- KRT moves quality work from a lot of papers. (For example, did you see the movie "Black Hawk Down"? That was written by a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter, and the whole series was available on KRT.)

AP simply does what no one else does. They cover pretty much everything, all over the place. And they stick to the basics for the most part.

I'm curious to see if this deal ends up benefiting Yahoo at newspapers' expense. That would be odd, to say the least, given the history and mission of the service.