Back when newspapers were the primary source of news and information for most Americans, the Associated Press (AP) was king of the hill in news syndication. But in today’s world newspapers have fallen on hard times. After all, by the time the paper hits the stands, it’s filled with old news. The Internet has changed the way that most of us get our news, and that has left the AP somewhat out in the cold.
Before the web became cheap and ubiquitous, we had very few options when it came time to catch up on the news. Of course there were the evening newscasts where a distinguished looking anchor would tell us what had happened since the previous day’s program, but with only 20 minutes or so of actual news time he could only hit the highlights of just a handful of stories. If we wanted a more complete rundown of the news, there was really just one choice: the daily newspaper.
Newspapers had plenty of room to cover a wide range of news and general interest stories, and the AP syndicated dozens of stories per day over the “wire” to local papers in towns and cities all across America. The editor of each paper would then choose which of those syndicated stories he wanted to publish, and pay the AP accordingly. Indeed times were good for the AP…
But then along came the Internet. Thanks to this amazing new medium, we now have literally thousands of minty-fresh news stories available for instant consumption at any given time, and they are free for the taking. All you have to do is visit your favorite news website or check out the latest headlines in Google News.
What’s more, the web is bursting at the seams with thousands of bloggers who bring us news of events both local and national, and often before the major news outlets even have a clue. Of course these amateur “journalists” don’t always get their facts just right, but then again the professionals don’t either. On the web it’s usually quite easy to verify what we read by checking it out with dozens of other online sources in a matter of minutes, but with the newspapers we usually had but one chance to read about a particular news item. And if it was wrong, oh well. That’s the way it was, and only rarely would we ever find out that the story was incorrect.
All of these factors add up to a big problem for the printed newspaper industry and the syndicators who “feed” them. Printed news is by its very nature stale, unreliable and increasingly expensive, and now that we have the Internet as a viable option papers all across the country are losing readers and going bust. And without hundreds of newspapers buying their stories on a daily basis the AP is staring straight into a bleak future as well. If they had seen the handwriting on the wall when it was still fresh, the AP could have adjusted their business model in order to effectively compete in the Internet age. But they didn’t, choosing instead to grasp at straws while trying to find a way to make “business as usual” pay like it did in the past.
Today I received the news (from a blog) that the AP plans to start charging the owners of websites that quote from one of their articles. The cost? $2.50 per word! Yeah, I can see how that’s going to prop up their bottom line when the same stories can be quoted for free from any number of other websites. The powers that be at the AP simply do not understand the Internet and the way it has changed the way we get our news. They don’t understand that the web is all about quoting other sources, and linking back to them as “payment”. Actually, when it comes right down to it, they don’t seem to understand that very few people indeed will be willing to pay for something that is readily available from other sources, for just the cost of a link.