Associated Press (AP)

Mondo Times editors    Boulder Colorado USA

Posted at 12:36am on Saturday, June 13th, 2009

The 2009 edition of the AP Stylebook has been updated to include "twitter," "baba ghanoush" and "texting":

Twitter, the social networking tool that has turned millions of people around the world into instant micro-bloggers, has made it into the 2009 edition of The Associated Press Stylebook, along with complicated business terms such as credit default swaps and derivatives that have gained more exposure amid the global recession.

The new edition of the Stylebook adds a "Quick Reference Guide" to make it easier for users to answer the most common questions on topics such as abbreviations and acronyms; homicide, murder and manslaughter; and polls and surveys.

Twitter, the Middle Eastern eggplant dish baba ghanoush and texting as a verb are among more than 60 new or updated entries in the new AP Stylebook, which includes more business, food, medical and Arabic terms and expanded information on major U.S. and international companies.

The range of new business terms also includes collateralized debt obligations, Libor, recession-proof, reverse auction, securitization and solvency.

The subscription-based AP Stylebook Online also has been improved, with audio pronunciation guides for newsmakers, an updated search function and detailed information on U.S. and international companies. The Online version is updated throughout the year and allows users to customize with their own listings, examples and local deviations from AP style.

Updates and additions in the AP Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law, the standard reference tool in newsrooms and many professional offices across the country, reflect changes in word usages and in society.

The Stylebook was first produced in 1953 as a stapled collection of rules totaling 60 pages, and has grown to a publication of more than 400 pages today. The book's creation was prompted in part by a technical change in the way the AP transmitted news as well as a need for consistency among a worldwide editorial staff that churned out stories for newspapers with a variety of style preferences. There have been major periodic revisions over the past few decades, the last in 2008, and the print edition is now updated annually.

The new print edition and online subscriptions can be ordered by credit card online at a secure site at http://www.apbookstore.com. The order form also allows customers to create an invoice to pay by check or money order, and member news organizations can request direct assessment.

The new edition costs $11.75 for member news organizations and college bookstores and $18.95 retail. The prices remain the same as in 2008 in recognition of the difficult economic conditions faced by news organizations. Stylebook Online prices also are the same, with individual subscribers paying $25 annually, $15 for members. Prices for Online site licenses are based on the number of users, with the price declining as the number of users increases.

Eric Kallgren    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 11:22am on Tuesday, April 7th, 2009

The Associated Press plans to crack down on web sites that pick up AP stories without a license, suing where necessary to stop the practice. It also plans to seek a share of revenue from web sites, especially news aggregators, that use AP stories.

The AP released this statement on April 6, 2009:

"The Associated Press Board of Directors today announced it would launch an industry initiative to protect news content from misappropriation online.

AP Chairman Dean Singleton said the news cooperative would work with portals and other partners who properly license content – and would pursue legal and legislative actions against those who don‘t.

“We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories,“ Singleton said at the AP annual meeting, in San Diego.

As part of the initiative, AP will develop a system to track content distributed online to determine if it is being legally used. AP President Tom Curley said the initiative would also include the development of new search pages that point users to the latest and most authoritative sources of breaking news."

Eric Kallgren    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 1:52pm on Monday, April 6th, 2009

The Associated Press started selling news content to online portals 10 years ago. Doing so may have contributed to the decline of the newspapers that own the wire service. according to Paul Farhi in the article "A Costly Mistake?," published in the Arpril/May 2009 issue of the American Journalism Review:

"Throughout the 1990s, millions of AOL subscribers got their daily news fix from its package of wire copy. In time, AOL touted its massive news audience to attract other providers, including ABC News and CBS News, to provide content. But its success was built off of the AP.

AOL wasn't the only online service that was generating giant traffic flows on the diverse news offerings of the AP. For many of the early portals and mass-market hubs of the Web – CompuServe, Prodigy, Excite – the AP was the go-to news source. Later, it would become a primary news provider for many of today's biggest online "news" giants, such as Yahoo!, MSN.com and Huffingtonpost.com. Even Google, the world's foremost aggregator of Web content, pays for the AP's work and hosts it on its site, instead of merely providing links that send readers to other sites. Hundreds of sites, most of which have no substantial internal newsgathering capability, are in the news business because of the Associated Press.

What's wrong with that picture? Possibly this: All of these sites compete for traffic and ad revenue with Web sites run by the nation's newspapers. Those newspapers, in turn, have owned the Associated Press as a nonprofit news cooperative since 1846. In fact, some of the stories the AP sends out to its digital customers each day are rewritten from newspapers. All of which means that, for years, newspapers have effectively been handing their online competitors one of their chief weapons in the fight for the news audience, the AP wire.

As the financially battered newspaper industry considers various schemes for charging for its digital content (see Prime Time, February/March), some look back ruefully on what news industry blogger Alan Mutter refers to as "the Original Sin" – the more or less collective decision to offer free access to news online."

Eric Kallgren    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 3:02pm on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009

March 2, 2009: Associated Press senior managing editor Mike Silverman is retiring at the end of March, and his duties will be split by two new senior managing editors: Mike Oreskes and John Daniszewski. Oreskes will take charge of U.S. news, while Daniszewski will handle international news stories and the AP's photo department.