Star-Tribune cancels AP
Cory Bergman August 26th, 2008
Up until now, mostly small papers here and there have been canceling their AP contracts. But now the Minneapolis-St. Paul daily, Star-Tribune, has given AP the required two-year notice for cancelation.
5 Comments Add your own
1. Hemant Joshi | August 26th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
Hello Star-Tribune staff,
It is with great respect that I write this email to you all. The Associated Press has for months been ripping off newspapers like yours with so-called “news” meant to dominate local media. While I understand it is hard to separate yourselves from such a monopoly, I believe you have taken an important and courageous step towards more truly fair and balanced news. Thank for you for making me proud to be an ardent reader of the Star Tribune and a citizen of Minneapolis.
2. mako | August 27th, 2008 at 5:33 am
This is a rather typical negotiating strategy. The newspaper industry needs its vendors to re-calibrate prices and services, as it itself re-calibrates. No need to elevate this to an act of courageous journalism. AP leadership better wake up fast though and remember its only strength is its members (and not the portals who poach news rather than produce it).
3. wtf | August 27th, 2008 at 7:30 am
Bravo! It’s about time newspapers kicked this crutch to the curb.
If AP hadn’t been so anti-customer and taking advantage of it’s content sources for so long I might have some sympathy, but anyone who has dealt with AP & their “Customwire” application for any length of time knows what a crock their online “services” are.
This should open up a lot of print space for local journalism. I hope other papers follow suit as it will be good for the industry as a whole.
4. iheartmpls | August 27th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
thank you, Star Tribune, for this announcement. it is welcome news.
5. Rod Overton | August 27th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
Once AP started selling their content straight to Google this became inevitable.
I guess why didnt more newspapers do this sooner?
Oh, and watch for a flood of TV stations to join suit, I predict.
Un-named stations I have dealt with in the last two years feel entirely ripped off: increasingly the AP just yanks stuff off their websites, distributes it to the wire for newspapers to pick up, who then put it on their websites. (Helps a lot with breaking news that newspapers are bad at getting — hint: form an assignment desk.)
The way the AP “scapes” it off web sites allows for little or no “embargo” effect — or if so, it is after the cat is out of the bag.
Oh, and AP video? A nice trick by newspaper sites is to repackage local or regional video from TV competitors that (stupidly) allow it to go to the AP and end up in their video service… the branding is pitiful for the TV station and the newspaper gets much-needed video. (I know this because I instructed my TV stations NOT to allow their video to go to AP because I was telling my newspapers in other markets — they did not overlap — to actually seek out local video from TV stations that WERE doing it.)
This is a movement that has been talked about below the radar for more than a year now, but, as usual, no one REALLY talked about it until someone did something about it.
Good luck everyone trying to make sense of it.
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