The schism between AP and its members

[Jim Thomsen]

It's well-summarized in a Forbes.com story here.

My own thoughts on this subject can be summed up thusly: I think AP is headed for a big fall in the next few years. If it keeps ensuring its own survival with initiatives that don't directly benefit its member newspapers, then I think a good many of those papers are going to look at their budgets, look at their trend toward "hyperlocal" reporting and make the decision to dump AP service.

And if enough of those papers make that decision — the Forbes story says members pay an average of $143,000 a year to AP — then AP will surely implode. Bureaus will be shuttered. Enterprise reporting will be lost. Expensive foreign coverage will suffer. The shoddy writing and editing we now almost routinely see will get much worse.

AP needs to remember one thing above all in its relationship with newspapers: It needs us much more than we need it. Newspapers can survive without AP, albeit with much difficulty. AP
cannot survive without its members — at least, not in any form we'd really want to be a part of. It cannot plan for its perpetuation of in a way that does not directly and materially benefit its member newspapers. And that benefit should be judged by members, not AP on its members' behalf.

Don't find this out the hard way, AP. Get your shit together.

[dfisher]

Jim, I'll take issue with one thing -- newspapers are being a bit too self-important if they think AP needs them more than they need AP.

AP is maneuvering itself to where it no longer needs its newspaper members. That newspapers now provide only 30 percent of its revenue ought to tell you something.

I wrote on my blog a few months ago that I had been told there was a rump session in NY where one thing discussed was whether to move from the nonprofit cooperative model to simply private ownership - be it a stock company or some other model. I never did find whether that was just "blue sky" or real discussion, but you can bet it remains on the table as an option.

[Jim Thomsen]

Sounds good to me. Let's slash that 30 percent and see who survives — and thrives.

[David Sullivan]

This is just so simplistic, but:

If newspapers own AP as a cooperative, can't they just say: AP, stop this? Does AP have a charter that says it can do what it wants in its own interests irrespective of what its owners want?

[dfisher]

David:
It's been awhile, and I never could remember all the details, bu the AP's structure isn't like a stock company where you own one share you get one vote.

If you can get access to J-STOR through the paper or your local library see

News as a Public Good: Cooperative Ownership, Price Commitments, and the Success of the Associated Press
Stephen Shmanske
The Business History Review, Vol. 60, No. 1 (Spring, 1986), pp. 55-80

You can link to it at [url]http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0007-6805(198621)60%3A1%3C55%3ANAAPGC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-3
[/url]to see the first page. (I'm sorry, but even with the URL tag, I can't seem to get that to come up as a clickable link.)

(That article also has a good discussion about news as a public good -- setting the stage for many of the problems the industry now faces -- 20 years before the economic tsunami hit. Another reason I wish journalists would pay more attention to the academic research on their industry. Much of what is happening was predicted 10 to 20 years ago.)

[Jim Thomsen]

From AP CEO Tom Curley's annual address last year:

One other principle also guides us: the commitment to the cooperative. We believe the cooperative provides the most comprehensive and relevant news content available anywhere in the world at a fraction of the cost of producing it.

Practice what you preach, baby.

[Wayne Countryman]

AP will do what it thinks it needs to do to survive. That's what businesses do.

What I hear from folks at newspapers and AP is that newspapers provide AP with less than they used to, and not in a timely enough manner, while newspapers are cutting their staffs -- including bureaus -- and need more from AP. Meanwhile, AP continues to shift its priorities away from print and toward forms of broadcast, including video.

The math doesn't work.

[Jim Thomsen]

What I hear from folks at newspapers and AP is that newspapers provide AP with less than they used to, and not in a timely enough manner, while newspapers are cutting their staffs -- including bureaus -- and need more from AP.

To me, that doesn't wash in the Web-first era. AP pretty regularly strip-mines my paper's Web site for material it wants. That takes very little time and effort. It should be able to collect more local material, not less.

And we send them our news budget every day.

Ah, well. I suspect that within a year or two, they'll be making do without the $200,000 or so we pay them every year. We use so little wire now that we really have little need for AP any more. I think my paper's paradigm shift to pure-local will be complete very soon.

And we won't be the only ones. Look for many, many smaller dailies to drop their AP contracts in the next few years.

We'll see if AP is really going to be OK with that. I have my doubts.

[Jim Thomsen]

Editors blow up at AP exec Tom Curley.

As much as I agree with the substance of the dispute, I don't quite see the need for the paradigm at work. Why do newspaper need the Associated Press? Why is a collective created by newspapers able to make newspapers feel like cringing, whipped dogs willing to sit, beg and roll over for whatever scraps they're offered?

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Screw AP. I'm fairly certain my paper is bailing in a few years, and I bet hundreds of small dailies will follow. Then we'll see who's got who by the tail.

[Jim Thomsen]

Here's a good story on how one group of Ohio newspaper editors have come up with an effective end run around diminishing AP service — by forming their own shared-news cooperative.

Ohio is ground zero for the widening rift between the AP and its member newspapers. Ben Marrison, editor of the Columbus Dispatch, says a recent trial in Akron involving the theft of state money epitomizes members' frustrations. Before the trial Mr. Marrison placed a call to the AP Ohio bureau to find out if it would be sending a reporter.

In the past, Mr. Marrison says, he could usually count on the AP to cover such a trial if he wanted to commit more reporters to a bigger story. When he was told the AP wouldn't have a reporter there, he sent one of his own to Akron. Shortly after the story was posted on the Dispatch's Web site, an AP staffer rewrote it for a broader audience and put the new version on the state wire. "So it was important enough for them to move, but not important enough for them to cover," Mr. Marrison said. "What has happened is we've become the wire service for the wire service."

That anecdote goes to the heart of my pique with AP. More than ever, in my view, we seem to be paying them to regurgitate our copy back to us.

I'd love it if Washington state papers got together and formed their own cooperative — especially when it comes to covering statehouse news.

[dfisher]

Jim:

I'll admit, when I read that story yesterday, to being baffled by that Akron trial response by AP. I used to be a supervisor in the Columbus bureau -- the control bureau -- and a major trial like that we would never let go.

When I was there, the Cleveland office (which is a correspondency, so it should not be tied up with desk duties) had five or six people -- plenty to detach one to Akron. Things may have changed in staffing; I don't know.

It's one thing to struggle, as I did as news editor, with covering the garden-variety murder trial in South Succotash. That's become much, much harder with the demise of PM papers and the one- and two-person county seat radio newsrooms.

But I do fear for the AP if, indeed, this is its response in what, from everything I've read, is a high-profile case like this. (We might have cooperated with the local paper to help us out on a few days we couldn't get there, if it was a big trial. But as a news editor, I would have been summarily executed has I not had some staffing on a trial like that. However, it is clear under Curley that spot news has become much less of a priority, and I understand -- though don't agree -- with the strategic thinking on that.)

AP's shift to editing "hubs" -- with all its potential problems -- has an upside in that it is supposed to free a few more bodies for coverage. I'll believe it when I see it, but as I live, I hope.

(Do not be surprised to see the AP go "private" within the next decade.)
Doug

[Jim Thomsen]

More on the schism from Alan Mutter in his Reflections Of A Newsosaur blog:

“The AP in many ways has become the enemy,” said a second editor who participated in the mini-survey. “To protect our content, we have refused to let AP share our content with any local websites or TV and radio stations.”

[dfisher]

More on the schism from Alan Mutter in his Reflections Of A Newsosaur blog:

“The AP in many ways has become the enemy,” said a second editor who participated in the mini-survey. “To protect our content, we have refused to let AP share our content with any local websites or TV and radio stations.”

Jim:
Actually, any AP member could have done that for years. I have had several over the years whose stories we could not use on broadcast.

I'm not going to tell you the AP is an angel in all this, but the papers, I fear, are also having a bit of buyer's remorse.

They made a deal with the devil in their creation and sustenance of the AP -- we'll share our stories so that you can keep the costs relatively rock bottom on the stuff from D.C. and overseas (and those few odd stories from around the country that we pick up daily). Because if that hadn't been the case and AP had actually had to staff all that stuff, no one would have been able to afford it. (The AP, for all its vices and virtues, had one special one -- it could squeeze a dime until it became a penny. Go back and look at the pay scales over the years and what was, until maybe the last two decades, a rather bitter union situation. Talk to anyone who got one of those "generous" AP stringer checks. There's a reason the AP lost a class-action lawsuit by a number of its women employees.)

Now, those newsrooms want to get out of it for any number of reasons. (Oh, but they still want the same bargain-basement priced coverage. I know that several tens of or hundreds of thousands of dollars a year does not seem bargain-priced, and it probably is not given the ratio of copy you are using these days. But work the numbers across the number of staff and stories produced and it is. The problem is that not everyone wants the same thing, so AP can't shrink linearly.)

I can't blame them, but a bit more honesty all around would be refreshing. They can't have the big trial staffed in one part of the state at the same time they want the two-bit legislative committee meeting covered unless they pay for the staff to do it or agree to cover some of the load. It was the member sharing that allowed that relatively thin staff to be stretched to look lots bigger than it was.

Mutter's "revelation," BTW, is not one at all. The state wires have always been 50-50 member to staff copy, or even less staff copy in smaller states. That's what kept the cost down.

[Pete Zicari]

I think there's another, more fundamental difference at work, too. We're trying to produce a daily news report that's unlike anything else in the world, whether you get it online or in print. If we relied heavily on AP copy, there wouldn't be much difference between us and the Dispatch. Instead, we read what's on offer and look for something more from one of the alternative wires.

Since the crunch hit last year, we've turned the front page over to local news, in any case. You can still read about Iraq, but not out front -- if you want more, you can get it online from any number of sources, or we'll deliver the New York Times to your door. But you'll never get an explanation of the FBI raids on the county commissioners from anybody but us.

The difference between sharing copy through the non-AP Ohio network and giving it to AP is that the shared stuff goes only to our markets, in print -- whereas when it goes to AP, it's going everywhere ... a day later.