In truth, few can offer the breadth of service of Associated Press. In truth, few need it.
The dispute at the moment involving about 100 newspapers and AP focuses on rates, on tiers of service and how they're defined, on ownership of content and how it can be shared, and on a general upset among papers that in their darkest moments AP isn't bending sufficiently to help them weather what looks like a protracted storm.
In a few isolated cases --- by no means common in the industry --- some papers are beginning to form regional alliances to share copy and serve notice they'll live without AP some time in the future (AP requires a two-year severance notice, so the revenue will keep arriving until 2010).
But CNN has sensed an opening and stepped in with an offer to provide a text service to complement the extensive audio/video elements it now sells to television, radio and online media. It has invited papers to come see the proposed expansion this week in Atlanta, and the New York Times provides an overview.
In watching the C3 blog for some time now, it's been impressive to see the openness of its creator, Chuck Peters, as he tries to lead his Iowa media company through the changes all of us are experiencing. ![]() We relaunched vancouversun.com today after a few months of collaboration, negotiation, reconsideration and all of the usual processes that go into a large project and a healthy number of smart people. Alan Mutter lays it on thick in his latest post on Reflections of a Newsosaur about the latest financials from the U.S. newspaper business: revenues off some $2 billion in the quarter just ended, year over year, and a staggering 31-per-cent plunge in classified advertising. Even more troubling is the second straight quarter of online revenue decline. Om Malik posts about the segregation of media into two distinct branches: the raw stream of dispatches from such services as Twitter, and the old media stream of more reflectiveness. The third-quarter results for the U.S. newspaper industry are in and the news is gruesome: an 18 per cent decline year over year. Roger Ebert, the venerable film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, known probably even more for his longlasting stint on television, tears a strip off Associated Press for pronouncing a 500-word limit on entertainment stories, then proceeds to connect it to the deterioration of criticism and ascension of the cult of celebrity in newspapers. The World Internet Project, led by the USC Annenberg School of Communication, has released its 2009 report. The project has been instrumental in tracking the usage and attitudes about the Internet in several countries. Richard Addis, best known in our neck of the woods as the former editor in chief of the Globe and Mail, but longer known as a U.K. journalist of significance, has posted five reasons for journalists to be cheerful. He'll elaborate, I'll condense: Apart from largely acknowledging he's not an acknowledged expert, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark does his best to fend off pointed questions about the future of the newspaper from the Los Angeles Times in this recent exchange. |