Thursday, July 30, 2009

AP Continues to Innovate...but is it enough?

Battered by the downward spiral of the print newspaper sector, the Associated Press, the member-funded nonprofit news agency, is looking at new ways to provide value.

Some ideas seem like they will be difficult to succeed. For example, trying to clamp down on non-member sites that use all or part of an AP article. It makes sense in a pre-social media world.

But in a social media world, you actually want others to post information and cite about you, and to provide links back to your site.

Plus compliance will be difficult to maintain.

On the other hand, AP has started a six-month experiment to provide articles by the Center for Public Integrity, the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, the Center for Investigative Reporting, and ProPublica. According to the New York Times, these new sources can help newspapers " fill the gap left by their own shrinking resources."

That's the kind of innovation that should help AP demonstrate its value to its 1,500 US newspaper members.

For more details, check out the Times article, "A.P. in Deal to Deliver Nonprofits’ Journalism."

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