The Evolving Newsroom

I'm interested to see how news agencies evolve now that there's nothing to stop news companies from joining forces by setting up websites to share copy amongst themselves.

SiliconAlleyInsider is keeping an eye on AP (Associated Press) in the US, whose recent fee-structure shake-up has created considerable unease among its users. It cites an Editor & Publisher report about the most recent user to give notice.

The Star Tribune of Minneapolis has become the latest, and so far the largest, daily newspaper to inform the Associated Press that it plans to drop the service in two years.

MinnPost.com reports that the paper informed AP that it will no longer use the service as of the fall of 2010. AP requires that member newspapers give two years' notice before dropping the service.

The Star Tribune joins a string of other daily papers who have either given notice or revealed plans to cut the service in recent months. Those include The Spokesman-Review of Spokane, Wash.; The Post Register of Idaho Falls; The Bakersfield Californian; and The Yakima Herald-Republic and Wenatchee World, both in Washington.

The recent decisions to drop AP service follow a planned AP rate structure change, which was announced in 2007 and takes effect in 2009. The rate change has already prompted complaints from numerous newspapers, including two groups of editors who wrote angry letters to AP to complain in late 2007 and early 2008.

News agencies take note. A group of newspapers in Ohio have banded together to share content - three months after the group voiced opposition to US news agency AP's latest rates shake-up, says Editor & Publisher.

The content sharing arrangement comes several months after editors and publishers from six Ohio newspapers penned a December 21 letter to AP that claimed both new rates and news practices were unacceptable to them, declaring, "We pay nearly
$4 million annually to the AP. That's a hefty sum even during the best of times - and we all would certainly agree that these are not the best of times."

"It is about sharing our content with the other large Ohio newspapers and getting their content in return," the memo adds. "The goal is to have stories that benefit the readers of all of our newspapers. A secondary benefit is that readers will know how much is produced by our newsrooms."

The sharing has apparently already begun, according to managing editor Alan D Miller of The Columbus Dispatch. He said his paper ran a story on B-3 today from The Plain Dealer of Cleveland about a Thursday speech by State Higher Education Chancellor Eric Fingerhut in Akron. The Dispatch website also linked to the Plain Dealer story.

AP announces the launch of Ask AP, where readers can ask questions about the stories that interest them. "AP editors will choose some of the questions sent in by readers like you and get answers from AP reporters and editors — the people who spend their days covering the very issues you're curious about," the news organisation says on Yahoo.

Aha. Now here's how you go about it.

"So send your questions to newsquestions(at)ap.org, with "Ask AP" in the subject line. Then keep an eye out for installments of the new Q&A column, where you'll finally get some answers."

Eh? Finally is the operative word. Clicking around Yahoo, and through to the AP site, I can't find a form for sending in my question, can't find any reference to asking questions, and can't find the Q&A column - not even on the site map.

Chances of me getting round to asking a question (with Ask AP in the subject line) and popping back at an undetermined time later to catch an answer? None.

Oh well.