We first told you about a coalition of Ohio newspapers that are side-stepping the Associated Press model with a new collective known as the Ohio News Organization, or OHNO (which might be exactly what AP execs are thinking about now). OHNO allows the papers to swap content without feeding it to the AP machine. As we’ve detailed, the AP takes content from its members – resells it to Google and others, all while extracting money from the originating organization. OHNO is up and running, and has sparked interest from groups of papers in Texas, Indiana and Pennsylvania, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The editor of the Columbus (OH) Dispatch nailed the problem on the head: “What has happened is we’ve become the wire service for the wire service.” Bingo. With news sites competing to be first and comprehensive, the AP doesn’t have to do nearly as much on the state level anymore. They can dial up their local media sites, do some rewrites and call it a day. “If they’re our partners, they’re going to help us find ways to reduce costs,” Robert Rivard, editor of the San Antonio Express-News told the WSJ. “If they’re not our partners, they’re just vendors.”
