From Glenn Franxman on April 29, 2005 at 8:16 AM

I'm all about it. I think the first steps are to create such applications that work within single organizations, searching the local library, works-in-progress, etc. The wonderful thing is that once this type of architecture is set up, p2p networks can be 'bridged' allowing one organization to share with another. Over time the industry could end up completely bridged and the need for the AP is obviated. Step one is building the content sharing infrastructure. Step two is P2P commerce to allow for the realtime purchases of reproduction rights. Step two is probably the hardest part.

From Adrian Holovaty on April 29, 2005 at 8:33 AM

Interesting idea! It certainly sounds more Web-friendly than the current AP setup.

I've gotta ask, though: Doesn't this attempt to solve a symptom of the problem rather than the problem itself?

The problem -- as I see it, at least -- is that what the AP does is unnecessary in the age of the Internet. Here's my (quite possibly incorrect) understanding of what it did for print newspapers:

1. Gave papers filler content to put between ads when there wasn't enough local copy.

2. Gave them access to coverage of out-of-market news, so that the local newspaper could be a one-stop shop for all news -- local, national and international. So the paper in Smalltown, Nebraska, could have front-page stories about the Pope.

Why does a local news site need to print national and international news? Do site maintainers really believe that people visit the Smalltown, Nebraska, newspaper Web site to find out what's going on in Iraq? Does it make sense for a local news site to have national news coverage when CNN, the Washington Post, Google News, et al, are a click away?

From Elliot Onn on April 29, 2005 at 9:01 AM

Adrian: Although AP stories can be used as bland filler, the potential for a P2P news system as suggested by Benz and Phillips, is that you enable more individual organizations, and for that matter individuals ("bloggers, citizen journalists and internet pure plays") to serve as an extended part of your newsroom. As I see it, the predominant issue is having a way to rank and know the credibility of an author and his/her work. If you create exclusive "sub-groups" to ensure journalistic quality, there will be a great deal of individual journalists outside of the exclusive group, who will never see their work under consideration.

Glenn: The idea of purchasing for reproduction rights is what we are looking to avoid. The "karmic balance" is such that you take as much as you give. I am skeptical as to how two articles can be quantitatively compared by a computer program (characters provide numerical count, only a human can judge quality).

Finally, I believe a system devoid of any monetary interchange is a better system than where you can financially compensate for your "karmic" shortcomings. That system allows for the rich organizations to dominate the environment (i.e. "voracious money pits swallowed most of them.")

The open-souce community would certainly welcome and perhaps be willing to build a program such as this. It seems reasonable to me that every user or group establish a profile, so before the exchange of news takes place, one user can view the others profile as a form of background check.

From super f on April 29, 2005 at 9:25 AM

AP writing it's own obit by charging more? That's like saying Verizon is hurting itself by offering crappy service -- you CAN charge more when you have a monopoly! AP IS the news, at least what is found on news.google.com, 90% of US front pages and broadcast news! Remember when most US newspapers fired most reporters, lowered salaries, and filled their pages with AP stories? THAT's why people don't read the paper anymore! By raising its pricing, AP is demonstrating its competence as an enterprise For editors who don't like AP's price hike -- wa wa wa, cry to your publisher to hire back some real reporters and get some real news!

From Randy Reddick on April 29, 2005 at 12:11 PM

There is hope in the halls of traditional media. Mssrs. Benz and Phillips seem to "get it" as far as "being digital" means (apologies to MIT). At least in the opening strains of their lengthy piece, they seem to get the picture. And they clearly responded sensitively to Murdoch's speech at ASNE.

They stopped short of saying how easy it would be for media organizations to embrace the revolution and share their own content -- without any help from the AP. But then the last part of their piece sounded so much like the immigrants that we all are.
-- rlr

From Doug Fisher on April 29, 2005 at 1:46 PM

The Benz Phillips piece is certainly a wakeup call for AP. It's also a bit naive. An excerpt from a more lengthy comment on my weblog:

"You think your local desk is going to want to deal with some of the -- to put it politely -- less-than-ideal copy offered up by local outlets? And what if that's the only source for your story? Or what if that source doesn't publish in English? And so long as members attribute with care, journalism standards will not be in jeopardy? That's why we have some of the garbage we have in papers now -- the same he said/she said/we quoted both sides so you can't hold us responsible journalism that has alienated our readers.

AP does give you some bodies on the ground -- maybe not on the scene, but close enough to be able to sift the genuine from the shady. The argument by Benz and Phillips springs from the "transparency" standard favored by many in blogging and other new media -- as long as we dislose how we came by it, etc., we're covered. But transparent crap is still transparent crap. Transparency is a valuable way to help build credibility, but it is not credibility in and of itself."

http://commonsensej.blogspot.com

From Susan Allen on April 29, 2005 at 2:31 PM

Hey, I think the demise of the AP began when the policy became to only rewrite "news" stories from media outlets which were members. No matter what the importance of the story could be, it will not get reported unless the outlet is an AP member.

The AP, which for decades, has been known as a trusted source of information is now nothing more than a corporate machine. Their motto should be "It's only news, if we get money for it." What a disgrace to the principle.

From Brian Humphrey on May 2, 2005 at 12:43 PM

With their recent TrustRank movement, our friends at Google clearly see the coming need for qualifying what to this point has merely been quantified. Namely, the "stand-alone journalist".

While I'm not so soon to write AP's obituary, I do see the writing on the wall. Pity those who choose to react rather than act on what is coming.

From John Collins on April 30, 2005 at 8:09 AM

Hooray, it looks like Scripps executives are finally acknowledging their mistake in walking away from UPI. It's great to see Scripps willing to put its vast fortunes behind paying off the costs of the libel suits when content from questionable sources is published. A provocative but perhaps much too revolutionary idea of news gathering.

From Randy Wright on April 30, 2005 at 4:11 PM

We're already doing this. It's called NEWSapE.com (get it?), and we welcome anyone to join us. We've got a great FREE sharing tool online that our resident genius programmers have developed. We'll host anybody at no charge. You can exchange with any other participating organization.

It is really a good tool -- easy to use, and fast. Articles can be associated with photos or Illustrator files or compressed archives or whatever you want. You can search in a variety of ways. You can provide advance budgets to you co-op partners. We can even exclude your competitors from seeing your material, even if they are also a member of NEWSapE.

Yes, it is time for Napsterized news, but we will need to ramp up to a national exchange. It's not going to happen overnight.

Any newspaper interested in taking a look at NEWSapE.com should contact Mark Bullard at the Daily Herald in Provo, Utah. His e-mail is mbullard@heraldextra.com.

Randy Wright

From Randy Wright on April 30, 2005 at 4:53 PM

I should add to my previous post:

We see the first step in Napsterizing news as being a return to the cooperative concept. AP started out this way, but over the years has come to see itself more as a commerecial vendor with customers.

With our fledgling new cooperative, NEWSapE members offer their material at no charge in exchange for receiving material at no charge. The easiest arrangement is to pick a newspaper in your region with which you share some common news coverage interest -- like the capitol or sports. Then work out your own agreement on what you want to share with each other. NEWSapE provides the tool for sharing at no cost.

We'll see how it evolves. I'm certainly open to suggestions on a basic agreement between the partners in the use of NEWSapE. As for such things as publication rights, I see no problem for now with newspapers making their own arrangements with each other.

By the way, NEWSapE is secured by passord and IP, so you can't log on unless you're an approved member. And even if an employee leaves your newsroom to join your competitor and takes your password, they won't be able to rip off your stories.

Randy Wright
Executive Editor
Daily Herald
Provo, UT

From Randy Wright on April 30, 2005 at 5:11 PM

Oh, one other thing ... (sorry, I'm doing 10 things at once today) ...

We're sharing news ON CYCLE, not a DAY LATE as under the AP model.

Randy

From Sam Smith on May 1, 2005 at 8:11 AM

>>"As content loses value, expert editing and customer-driven bundling are becoming the tools for building audience. And audience - not content - is the news industry’s value proposition."<<

But is this really true? I think there's an argument to be made that content is being shorted in this analysis. More here if anybody is interested...

lullaby pit

From Randy Wright on May 1, 2005 at 5:43 PM

(((As content loses value, expert editing and customer-driven bundling are becoming the tools for building audience. And audience -- not content -- is the news industry’s value proposition.)))

I don't agree that content, per se, is losing value. We're just not charging money for it. Revenue per customer on the Web is a fraction of print -- and we did this to ourselves by offering our very expensive products virtually free to readers and advertisers. Right now we're seeing a migration from print to online partly because the Web doesn't cost the reader anything. That's a really suicidal business proposition. We need to get advertising rates up to a level that realistically reflects the value of online readership.

The need for expert editing is nothing new. It has always been the best tool for driving readership. Good editors know that anything people ARE interested in, SHOULD BE interested in or WOULD BE interested in if they knew about it forms the basic definition of news. In my experience, people are pretty much the same everywhere in basic respects. If editors put up material that is timely and relevant, stories that are in the reader's backyard, that affect him directly, our products will be read (it also helps if the news is sleazy). The less our work product meets those criteria, the less it gets read. This is not rocket science.

As to the value that young customers bring to journalism's business plan, the jury is still out. Their main value seems to rest in their future potential, when they actually acquire money and property and become politically sentient. They have some money now, but they live in relative poverty compared to the "grown-ups." Major local advertising accounts are not aiming for youths. Kids have no investments (real estate, business operations), they don't vote, they don't have children in school, they don't pay taxes (much), they're not eligible for Social Security. Bottom line is that they have no personal stake either in their own community or in the world. Making matters worse, literacy has taken a nose-dive. Too many youths don't read, partly because they can't, or because they have short attention spans for anything that's not part of the materialistic life they've managed to sponge off their parents. So the main issue is not print vs. online, it's readers vs. non-readers. I agree that we need to figure out ways to turn more young people into information consumers. But it doesn't matter what vehicle they use to acquire the information. And you can't force someone to be interested through packaging techniques. The story itself is what drives readership, and that's where we should be directing some heavy thinking.

Then there's that really big tree stump -- the cost of doing business. I doesn't matter how wonderful and relevant the journalism is if we can't afford to produce it. To protect the franchise, we've got to get full value out of our online advertising. Reporters and editors aren't cheap, and if we can't pay the freight, then journalism simply won't be done, either to help people be good citizens or to be the brunt of jokes. Ultimately, when the money dries up, so will our political system, and civilization as we know it will crumble. The warlords will return, probably wearing iPods. And it's a short distance from there to bearskins, loincloths and human sacrifice.

(((Belatedly taking note of precipitous readership declines among young people,)))

The readership decline has been across the board, not just among young people, but it coincides with the rise of television. If you look at the curve, it appears to have bottomed out in the last few years. It's been relatively flat for several years, which may mean that the people who were going to flee print already have.

(((But young people, as Rupert Murdoch recently pointed out, are digital natives, not digital immigrants. Their primary language is digital. When they do use their secondary language, print, their warmest response is to print formats that are highly visual and that are built with high proportions of short, non-narrative story forms. (See recent research at the Readership Institute.) ))))

I see this as mostly thrashing at leaves. The digital/print divide is really only a symptom of what's going on down deep. Journalism will not find its salvation in tricking kids into reading -- by employing gimmicks in their "native language." The challenge is delivering relevant information, and that brings us back to EDITING. If we're not being read, chances are the material we're flinging before the public is of low interest, regardless what language it's in. Let's get the horse in front of the cart here. Good editing means, first, the smart selection of subject matter. I'm reminded of the old saying that we need to get the news right, but we also need to get the right news.

Salvation for journalism will not originate in our delivery format but in core content. Some content lends itself to a non-narrative approach and some doesn't. So what is our goal? I thought it was to educate people. If not, we should all choose some other career, like cosmetology. A complex or important story may not be told best by hacking it up into little sound bites with cute visuals. Language still has value (you can call me a fogey, a dinosaur, an endangered species if you want). I might add that the "nuggets of information" approach is more labor-intensive and costs much more than the old fogey approach, so that would need to be factored into any new economics.

But the real question is not narrative vs. non-narrative. It's INTERESTING vs. BORING. Once an interesting story is selected, we should use the right tool for the job of telling it. Sometimes the right tool is visual, sometimes narrative, sometimes a listing, sometimes video or whatever. There's not just ONE right approach but many, depending on the nature of the story that needs telling. In any case, storytelling form is a secondary matter to the underlying reason the story needs to be told in the first place (its news value).

I agree that we shouldn't expect young people -- whose language has been different from their parents since the dawn of time -- to take their news medicine even though it tastes bad. We need to make it taste better. But again the solution starts with core content. Presentation makes a difference, but it takes second place to topic and angle. What are we writing about and why? That's the key. After that comes the how.

Whether a reader reads online or in print makes no difference at all. Our value is not in the sort of delivery truck we use. Of course we should embrace digital delivery, but we certainly shouldn't be giving it away free to advertisers. Nor should we cheapen the journalism. If we do either of those things, we're doomed.

Having said that, I hasten to add that I've seen too many editors who continue to pound out boring dreck just because they always have. I have little hope that this will change much in my lifetime, given the generation that's currently in power and the education the young people are getting. As I've grown older I've come to realize that most people (including those in news management) are AVERAGE. This means they pretty much SUCK when it comes to leadership, creativity, energy, commitment, innovation, etc. Too many of them expect to have a life. They like to go home on time. (Did they forget they're on a mission from God??) As a result, you can literally watch as today's technology leaves them behind.

There's no guarantee that because we use the Internet, young readers will automatically follow. Like most people, they often don't know they're interested until we show them what's interesting. The Web is great when you know in advance what you're looking for -- like Ebay. News, on the other hand, requires editors capable of sorting out and delivering what a reader wouldn't have thought of on his own. It's no fresh revelation that we've got to be smarter, faster, stronger, more relevant if we want to capture the young. It's just damn hard given the quality of the raw material coming out of universities today.

It takes educated, engaged people to run a civilization. Unfortunately, the current slide into intellectual nullity may be impossible to stop. Technology may even hasten the end by providing an easy escape from the rigorous civic responsiblity upon which America is founded. Being informed takes effort, and I'm not seeing a lot of interest in that among today's entertainment-minded young people.

From Vin Crosbie on May 2, 2005 at 7:47 AM

The Peer-to-Peer aspect is already underway in Connecticut. The afternoon daily in Willimantic (the chronicle.com) dropped the Associated Press three years ago. It uses Reuters and LAT/WP to replace the AP’s international and national reports and a P2P arrangement to replace the AP’s state and regional reports.

Under pre-arrangement with other Connecticut dailies, the Chronicle’s editors select state stories and photos from those other dailies’ websites, publishing those in print, complete with the credits and bylines of those other dailies. The other dailies can likewise publish the Chronicle’s stories and photos (notably those about the local University of Connecticut and its sports teams). The Chronicle has a similar arrangement with one of the Boston dailies for Red Sox stories and photos.

Three years of daily experience has shown the Chronicle that it’s perfectly feasible for a local daily -- even one devoting several pages per day to international and national news -- to operate without the AP. (This also resulted in considerably newsroom cost savings.)

The Associated Press is composed of good folks who do good work, but it needed to make changes in the 1990s that it's only now beginning to plan. The fact is that it is no longer indispensable for daily newspapers. In Willimantic, we (I'm a director and co-owner of the Chronicle) have known that for years and have put the future to practical use.

From Chris J. Walter on May 2, 2005 at 4:46 PM

I am fascinated by the ideas mentioned in the initial document by Mssrs Benz&Phillips as they reflect very much the proposals I have brought forward as head of development at a national wire service in Switzerland (which I left since) a long time ago already. I am convinced that the media industry can benefit profoundly from well optimized, professional content sharing services which will become a virtual marketplace similar to eBay.com or other professional trading plattforms.

I am all for it and would like to propose as next steps to give this initiative a somewhat more formal environment by

- giving it a name (something like 'google' or so :-)
- creating a room to continue and expand this discussion in digital way (like an eGroup at yahoo.com or something similar) which should allow for multiple topics and for proper threading etc.

I am certainly ready to contribute details for the model I've had the time to think about for several years now. (Before well known reflexes to disruptives changes became effective, it was endorsed as a strategic project by the board of directors what allowed for some prototyping work to be done). I am convinced that a scalable technical (preferably open source) solution is relatively easy to achieve and that most if not all concerns can be addressed in the long run. However, the most challenging task will be to convince all the established players in the news industry to adopt new ways of doing daily business. Of course, there is a economic argument growing stronger by the day and this will be helpful.

Numerous initiatives for establishing some sort of an exchange for news articles have taken place all over the planet and can be reached on the Web and some are mentioned in comments above. As forerunners they have planted the fields and have created awareness for new possibilities emerging with new technologies. But they have not changed the industry (yet!). What is fascinating me is that this seems to change now as executives from a considerable media company have come to the same or similar conclusions and are supporting steps to move forward. It is not only the media companies in the U.S. (with the specific AP membership situation), but the news industry on a global scale who can benefit from a re-arranging of the way news content is exchanged among professional partners. Although, thanks to the Internet, content can flow around the globe (almost) for free nowadays, it is important that professionally created content keeps it quality and commercial value. A future news exchange network must strive to not only provide a smart technical solution, but to preserve these values in a fast and sometimes adversely changing world.

chris.j.walter@gmail.com

From Allan Kim on May 4, 2005 at 4:54 PM

Could AP's new policy have more to do with empire-building at AP Digital than with institutional cluelessness. While I'm not privy to price information, I'd suspect it's intended to drive newspapers toward premium services (e.g. AP Wire) and to discourage AP members from publishing and distributing AP content on their own.

The idea of P2P news cooperatives supplementing or replacing AP does have some appeal. I am concerned that years of enjoying the luxury of the wire-service libel exemption have eroded independent news judgment at small- and mid-sized papers, and I wonder if editors are ready to paddle their own figurative canoes on state and regional issues.

From Michael Strong on May 9, 2005 at 6:22 PM

I was looking for something in the article which justifies the term "experience paper." I have to draw issue with the methodology for the conclusions. I don't see how this identifies any new audience and separates that new audience from any previous audience.
On page eight of the startrib_overview.pdf we are shown two ads and told this represents the old and the new. All I can see are two approaches which have been taken for as long as I can remember. Writing an ad which appeals to someone's eye and someone's interest is as old as any display advertising (or nature). The catalog-listing derided here are the very things sought out by persons who are looking for price listings in shopper type publications and web sites. The catch-your-interest ads are draws in other types of publications. A further extension are those ads which are deliberately obscure. I fail to see how this is new.
Here is a text summary from page seven:
"In summary, the main techniques used were:
• Change news choices to reflect subject matter of interest to the target audience and experiences that resonate with them
• Add and highlight elements of stories that play to experiences
• Write active headlines that speak directly to readers and play to experiences
• Reframe and rewrite stories to get at “why this matters to you”
• Write shorter, clearer narratives
• Pull out facts that clog narrative flow and craft them into separate components
• Explain complicated and/or routine stories in other than narrative form"

How is this new? Did we really forget this?

This goes along with an observation I've made in the last five or six years of the promised computer generation. We don't have a computer literate generation. We have instead a generation of young kids who can operate machines but who have very little idea of how the machines operate. Not that everyone needs to know the details, but I get a sinking feeling that we are entering a new age of ignorance or at least a new age in which lack of technical expertise will scuttle us.
I think we've sold them the Bugatti and an extra-long Isadora Duncan scarf but forgot to tell this generation how the wheels operate near a flowing scarf.

From Patrick White on May 11, 2005 at 9:59 AM

Hi. I am very much interested on this story ablout AP's future. Very interesting.

Could somebody mail me the AP's 2004 annual report? AP is declining to release it to journalist...

Tks!

Patrick White

Contact me by e-mail: white@megatoon.com