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Mondo Times editors
Boulder, Colorado USA | Posted at 11:37pm on Thursday, September 10th, 2009 | U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has criticized the AP for publishing a controversial photograph, the New York Times reported on September 4, 2009:
"A furious Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has upbraided The Associated Press for its decision to go against the wishes of a young Marine’s family and publish a photograph of him taken after he was mortally wounded in Afghanistan.
In a scathing letter to Tom Curley, president and chief executive of The A.P., Mr. Gates said that the news agency’s decision was “appalling” and that the issue was one not of constitutionality but of “judgment and common decency.”"
The full story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/05/world/asia/05gates.html
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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.
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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."
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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."
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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.
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Eric Kallgren
Boulder, Colorado USA | Posted at 4:18pm on Monday, February 23rd, 2009 | February 19, 2009: In the article "For Subscribers Only: Locking Up the News Sites," BusinessWeek magazine reported that newspapers are trying to make online consumers pay for the news:
"Can I imagine content going behind a pay wall?" asks Tom Curley, the CEO of the Associated Press. "Absolutely. And, yes, we are in conversations about that." These conversations with other content players are informal, he admits. And a gazillion issues arise. One is that the Associated Press has a licensing agreement with Google (GOOG), the particulars of which Curley would not detail, that won't expire until December. (A Google spokeswoman declined to comment.) It's also unclear how this would work for a newspaper or a TV operation that does not want to wholly destroy existing traffic. And this solution may not be one-size-fits-all: The Wall Street Journal gets away with charging; The New York Times might; a less illustrious paper a tenth as big may not."
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Eric Kallgren
Boulder, Colorado USA | Posted at 4:42pm on Thursday, January 22nd, 2009 | On January 21, 2009, the Associated Press reported that Sarah Palin is going on the offensive against nasty news organizations:
"Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is going on the offensive against news organizations and bloggers she says are perpetuating malicious gossip about her and her children. But political observers say the former Republican vice presidential candidate can't have it both ways: trotting out the children to showcase her family values, then trying to shield them from scrutiny.
Palin's criticism also raises questions about her motivations because she has said she is open to a presidential run in 2012.
"I think she's positioning herself. She's attacking the media as a way to generate support among a base she hopes will support her," said Leonard Steinhorn, a professor of communications at American University in Washington and an expert on the presidency.
Palin shied away from interviews during the campaign, although her children often accompanied her on her travels, including her oldest daughter, Bristol, who was pregnant at the time.
But in recent weeks, she has personally reached out to media outlets such as People magazine and The Associated Press to complain about information she claimed is wrong."
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Mondo Times editors
Boulder, Colorado USA | Posted at 4:19pm on Monday, December 22nd, 2008 | On December 21, 2008, the Associated Press announced its top 10 news stories of 2008:
NEW YORK (AP) — The epic election that made Barack Obama the first African-American president was the top news story of 2008 — followed closely by the economic meltdown that will test his leadership, according to U.S. editors and news directors voting in The Associated Press' annual poll.
The campaign, with subplots emerging throughout the year, received 100 first-place votes out of 155 ballots cast for the top 10 stories. Two other political sagas — the history-making candidacies of Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sarah Palin — also made the list.
The vast economic crisis, plunging the U.S. into recession and ravaging many business sectors worldwide, was the No. 2 story, receiving 49 first-place votes. The precipitous rise and fall of oil prices was No. 3.
The top story of 2007 was the massacre of 32 people at Virginia Tech University by a mentally disturbed student gunman.
Here are 2008's top 10 stories, as voted by AP members:
1. U.S. Election
2. Economic Meltdown
3. Oil Prices
4. Iraq
5. Beijing Olympics
6. Chinese Earthquake
7. Sarah Palin
8. Mumbai Terrorism
9. Hillary Clinton
10. Russia-Georgia War
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Eric Kallgren
Boulder, Colorado USA | Posted at 12:21pm on Friday, November 21st, 2008 | On November 20, 2008, Reuters reported that the Associated Press is planning job cuts:
"The Associated Press plans to cut up to 10 percent of its workforce in 2009, according to sources at the news service, as it copes with tough financial times and ailing member newspapers.
"The AP has one of the world's largest news-gathering teams, employing about 3,000 journalists, and a total of about 4,100 people worldwide. The cuts could amount to about 400 employees.
"AP Chief Executive Tom Curley delivered the news as part of a "town hall" meeting with employees.
"All areas and ways of doing business are being reviewed," said an AP statement provided to Reuters. "The AP, which recently instituted a strategic hiring freeze, may need to reduce staff over the next year. If so, it hopes to achieve much of the reduction through attrition."
"The job cuts come as the AP restructures its operations in the United States in a bid to provide what it said would be deeper, more relevant coverage for its member newspapers."
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Jim Leonard
Davis, CA; USA | Posted at 6:39pm on Thursday, April 10th, 2008 | Associated Press:CRAP! Says: Bush embraces Iraq pullout pause. What phonies! Should say: Bush stalls Iraq pull; this is more honest and to the point.
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