Still A Newspaperman

There is a growing belief at small and mid-size papers that the Associated Press is a service no longer worth keeping.

This may not mean much to outside observers. But within the industry the implications are huge, the stakes very, very high.

From its 19^th Century founding as a news cooperative serving member newspapers with telegraphed “wire” reports from around the country and, later, around the world, the AP has been the wire service backbone of nearly every daily newspaper in the country. The service has reinvented itself many times through the years, sometimes giving newspaper editors the shakes. But until the last several months, the idea that we could live without AP was unthinkable.

Not so today. Three factors are at play.

1. The AP is changing the nature of its service and its fee structure. The changes are fundamental. The new approach reminds me of TV cable billing. Beginning next year, there will be an AP “basic,” essentially a breaking news wire service. A second tier called “AP Complete” will deliver more AP news content, providing most of what we currently receive. But there will be supplemental services and add-ons that have the potential to further increase costs to member papers.

In presenting the new rate structure, AP delivered some immediate rate relief to some of us. My newspaper’s rate would be about $30,000 less than this year’s if we purchased AP Complete. Our   2008 payment is slightly  more than $400,000. The proposed reduction isn’t much. But not everyone shared in even that minimal rate relief. I’ve heard from a number of other editors who are looking at 3 to 9 percent increases, an unsupportable jump given the state of the newspaper industry. To those editors, most of whom were led to believe they would see a slight reduction, the new rates are an outrage.

2. The AP’s content is of less value to small and mid-size papers whose franchise is local news. The new rate structure is part of a general AP reinvention designed to develop more online and mutli-media content and to leverage AP content (some of it ours) to third parties for a price and their profit. This reinvention is certainly necessary for the AP’s long-term future. At least that is what its board members must believe. But it doesn’t help us much. At the local level, we use AP heavily for national sports, for national and international photos, for stocks and for some regional news. We dropped the AP online service a couple of years ago, with virtually no impact.

What we really need from AP is more news from the region.

The Washington state AP bureau is in Seattle so is, for obvious reasons, focused on the west side of the state. Our region, on the east side, boasts only one AP reporter, based here in in Spokane. Obviously, he can do only so much. A few weeks ago, leading up to tonight’s Washington primary, the AP reporter in the state capitol told our editors AP was not staffed to do much more than election results. No summaries of key races or roundups out of the counties or key cities. That used to be basic AP stuff.

The wire service does send us stories from other regional papers and we need and use those. But, frankly, why should we pay for that. Most of the regional editors with whom I’m discussing the situation, would be happy to develop our own, free web-based content sharing system. That idea already is taking shape in other parts of the country. And we can obtain most of what we need in business and sports from far cheaper services.

3. Notwithstanding the above, most newspaper editors are fighting desperately to retain local staff. If I can save $400,000 by dropping AP, I may avoid additional staff reductions in the coming year. Why wouldn’t I trade wire dispatches from Bangladesh for local news reporters? The current economic climate gives me no choice, irrespective of my concerns for rates and content. A rate reduction of $30,000 dollars, give or take, won’t save a single job.

Even with discontent growing, it’s likely AP will hold on to most of its newspaper members. The governing board is populated by high-ranking execs from the major newspaper companies. It’s unlikely (though not impossible) that they will allow their newspapers to stray.

At my newspaper, we haven’t yet made the final decision. This is one where my publisher gets to weigh in. His great-grandfather was one of the original AP founders and his father served for years on the AP board. I need to show him that I can provide most of the content we’d lose should AP go away. I’m confident that if I can do that, he’ll agree to the change. Even publishers with a long association with AP can do the math.

There is one other significant wrinkle. The standard AP contract requires two-year notice of cancellation. But few of us can wait two years given the business climate. Lawyers will have to decide if the unilateral changes made in the AP service negate that cancellation language. That issue may take some time to resolve.

But expect a flood of cancellations in any event. Papers in Bakersfield, CA., and Idaho Falls, ID, have already given notice. Many Northwest editors are considering the same action. A significant if not wholesale abandonment of AP will signal one of the most important and far-reaching shifts in the newspaper business in many years.

steve

Tags: AP, Associated Press, editors, journalism, newspaper content, newspapers

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 19th, 2008 at 2:28 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.