Category Archives: associated_press

Nieman Journalism Lab: AP Interactive visualizes a future of stories that reach beyond text

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"the AP’s Interactive department is pumping out a steady amount of work, it’s what they’re creating — and how they’re creating it — that’s really interesting: from data visualizations to mash-ups of video, maps, and animation that can jump from website to phone to (soon enough) tablet. Often, they’re creating those features against the backdrop of breaking news."

Talking Points Memo: Internal AP Memo Thanks Writers For Successful ‘Literary Treasure Hunt’ In Finding Sarah Palin’s Book

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AP memo on how reporters who found an accidentally pre-released copy of Sarah Palin's book produced a story in 40 minutes: "They bought a copy, ripped it from its spine and scanned it into the system so it could be read and electronically searched. A NewsNow moved within 40 minutes, followed quickly by multiple leads as details were gleaned from the 413-page manuscript."

Nieman Journalism Lab: How The Associated Press will try to rival Wikipedia in search results

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"[The AP plans] to build 'news guide landing pages' that will aggregate the AP’s content around subjects, places, organizations, and people. Think of the topic pages on sites like The Chicago Tribune, BBC, and others — except that the AP will be harnessing its vast network of members and customers in what could amount to a brilliant SEO play."

MediaFile: Why I believe in the link economy

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Chris Ahearn, president, Media, Thomson Reuters: "Blaming the new leaders or aggregators for disrupting the business of the old leaders, or saber-rattling and threatening to sue are not business strategies – they are personal therapy sessions. Go ask a music executive how well it works. ... Let’s stop whining and start having real conversations across party lines. Let’s get online publishers, search engines, aggregators, ad networks, and self-publishers (bloggers) in a virtual room and determine how we can all get along. I don’t believe any one of us should be the self-appointed Internet police; agreeing on a code of conduct and ethics is in everyone’s best interests."

Editor & Publisher: ‘Smart’ Idea: AP App Pushes Hot News

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"[Jane Seagrave, AP’s senior vice president/global product development] says the AP mobile apps have proven popular, with more than 1.2 million downloads. About 75% of those apps are for the iPhone, but Seagrave points out that’s because the iPhone app was the first one AP launched. Down-loads for the Blackberry version are “creeping up” since it was made available three months ago, she adds."

Steve Yelvington: Microformats, hNews, the AP and the Animals

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"Some geeks at the AP got together with some geeks in Europe and came up with a really smart idea. Unfortunately, that smart idea got sucked into the swirling vortex of panic and craziness that reigns at a lot of media companies these days. And a really smart idea has become terribly misunderstood, twisted into a really bad idea, portrayed as something it is not, sold as a cure for a questionable ailment that it can't fix. The idea is the application of microformats to news content."

Wired.com: AP Doesn’t Know Its Protection Tech Doesn’t Protect

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"Nothing in copyright law requires a blogger or commenter to include the meta-tags if they use an excerpt in a blog post. In fact for a blogger to comply, they’ll have to do more than just cut and paste – they will have to view the source code on a newspaper’s site, search through the HTML and javascript to find the text of the story and its micro-formats. Once the thief has gone to this trouble the purloined story will call home to report where it is being re-printed, via a Web Bug url embedded in the story. Only then would The News Registry even be aware of this use."

Ars Technica: DRM for news? Inside the AP’s plan to “wrap” its content

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"AP is simply relying on a newly-developed microformat called hNews. ... In what way does this scheme 'wrap' and 'protect' the news? It doesn't; it simply marks it up, and adding tags expressing a content creator's wishes on reuse has no bearing on someone's rights under US copyright law. ... You'll be forgiven if you find it difficult to square the reality of hNews with the AP's pronouncements about it."

AP: AP eyeing better deals with Internet heavyweights

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"Besides hammering out new Internet licensing contracts, the AP also plans to review more effective ways to capture revenue from advertising tied to its stories, photography, audio and video, [Chief Executive Tom Curley] said. One way could be through a new system that will bundle some of the AP's top stories with those of newspapers and broadcasters on certain topics. The system, which is still under development, would rely on so-called "landing pages" that could compete with the news sections run by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN."

ZDNet.com: Between the Lines: AP eyes news aggregators; Risks exposing its lack of value add

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Larry Dignan: "I’m not going to sweat AP’s search for rules of engagement for one simple reason: I link to the real source material, which more often than not is a press release. On any given day you can easily bypass AP. And if the AP wants to find a better subscriber business model it needs to adhere to two words: Add value."

BusinessWeek: Can the AP Out-Google Google?

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"[The] AP plans to build an online destination where it hopes Web users can easily find and read its news stories and those of other content creators. When it comes to compiling online news, the AP wants to out-Google Google. The Web search giant "has a wacky algorithm" for collecting news stories, AP Chief Executive Tom Curley says in an interview."

ReadWriteWeb: Hitwise: News Sites Need Search Engines and Aggregators

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"According to Hitwise, the Drudge Report is the largest single source of visitors to news and media sites. Google News (1.5%), CNN.com (1.4%) and Yahoo! News (0.8%) also drive relatively large amounts of traffic, but it is interesting that no single site really holds anything close to a monopoly here."

New York Times: Bits Blog : The A.P.’s Real Enemies Are Its Customers

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"[T]he real problem is that the A.P.’s view doesn’t take into account what those accused of being news pirates are stealing. They aren’t depriving record companies of $15 CD sales. At worst, they are depriving paying A.P. customers of the opportunity to show people the same articles free, earning rather meager ad revenue."