AP is getting hurt by own web policy?
From Techdirt: http://techdirt.com/articles/20081017/0221472571.shtml
While the Associated Press was wasting time stupidly threatening to sue bloggers for pointing people to AP stories without paying, perhaps the folks there should have been paying a bit more attention to actually making sure its business model worked. As we've been noting, over the past few years, its strategy has put it in pretty much direct competition with its members (the AP is made up of numerous member newspapers).
That's creating problems, as we've seen a variety of newspapers have recently been refusing to renew their contracts, notifying the AP that they don't want to participate anymore. There have been some notable names, from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, but none of the "major" newspaper companies had bailed... until now. The Tribune Company, publishers of the Chicago Tribune, the LA Times, the Baltimore Sun and others has surprised many by telling the AP it's not renewing. That could be the big domino, as many other newspapers may follow suit. The article here notes even that some newspapers have been experimenting with picking days when they try to publish without a single AP story to see how it goes.
What's amazing is that, so far, it doesn't seem like the Associated Press recognizes that there's a real problem. They simply seem to shrug off each defection. At some point, the AP needs to realize that it needs to change, rather drastically, if it's going to survive. While the AP isn't like an ordinary company -- it's a non-profit cooperative made up of member news organizations -- that doesn't mean it doesn't need to have a working business model. Without that, and with big members dropping like flies, it won't be able to exist at all.
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Just In ....
With the Associated Press bizarrely focusing on competing with its own members, it hasn't been much of a surprise at all that those member newspapers have been leaving in droves. While the AP recently announced that it was going to rethink its strategy, it appears that plenty of other news operations see the AP's self-destructive decisions as an opportunity. We already noted in that earlier story that some newspapers were banding together directly to share content, and now CNN is announcing its own wire service that newspapers can tap into. Clearly, newspapers value being able to get content from other sources (especially for international coverage), and it seems that news operations like CNN see the AP's problems as a big opportunity.
John Sokolich
Owner: Maine Web FX
jsokolich@mainewebfx.com
AP Cuts 10% of Staff
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Associated Press plans to cut up to 10 percent of its workforce in 2009, according to sources at the news service, as it copes with tough financial times and ailing member newspapers.
The AP has one of the world's largest news-gathering teams, employing about 3,000 journalists, and a total of about 4,100 people worldwide. The cuts could amount to about 400 employees.
AP Chief Executive Tom Curley delivered the news as part of a "town hall" meeting with employees.
"All areas and ways of doing business are being reviewed," said an AP statement provided to Reuters. "The AP, which recently instituted a strategic hiring freeze, may need to reduce staff over the next year. If so, it hopes to achieve much of the reduction through attrition."
The job cuts come as the AP restructures its operations in the United States in a bid to provide what it said would be deeper, more relevant coverage for its member newspapers.
It is unclear how the cuts would affect the AP's news flow. Many U.S. residents cannot read a day's helping of news in print or on the Internet without encountering an AP story. The group has 240 bureaus worldwide, numerous local U.S. bureaus and 1,500 U.S. daily paper members.
The AP, which started 162 years ago as a newsgathering cooperative for U.S. papers, earlier this year revised its rate structure for member papers to help lower the fees that they pay as advertising revenue declines imperil publishers.
This comes after publishers objected to the terms of a previous rate structure plan the AP had planned to introduce.
One big publisher, Tribune Co, gave notice that it might drop the AP stories over the next two years as a result.
Some papers, like The Star-Ledger in Newark, New Jersey, have started exploring running editions without AP stories, which often fills many pages of papers that have been slashing staff, leaving few people and few ads to fill the space.
The Star-Ledger and many other papers, as well as big publishers from USA Today's Gannett Co Inc to McClatchy Co and the New York Times Co have collectively cut thousands of jobs this year. Investors in turn have abandoned these companies as stock market prospects as their chances for recovery fail to materialize.
In addition to wires such as Bloomberg, Dow Jones Newswires and Agence France-Presse, the AP competes with Reuters News, a division of Thomson Reuters Corp.
John Sokolich
Owner: Maine Web FX
jsokolich@mainewebfx.com
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