CNN To Dump AP As It Tries To Compete With The AP As A Wire Service

from the good-for-cnn dept

Over the past few years, we've been watching (in some bit of horror) as the Associated Press makes misstep after misstep in trying to protect its old model of doing business. Even as a non-profit, member association, the AP seems to have trouble making forward-thinking decisions. It kicked off with the AP's complaints a few years ago that Google News was somehow sending too much traffic to its members' websites, leading to a deal between the AP and Google that took traffic away those member paper websites. If I were at a member newspaper, I'd be furious -- and many newspapers were, in fact, quite upset by this. Not long afterwards, stories started popping up about newspapers ditching the AP. Then, there's been the AP's bizarre and self-defeating hatred for bloggers, combined with a laughable plan to DRM the news (an idea that's gone absolutely nowhwere).

A year ago, we suggested that other wire services really had a chance to step up, embrace what technology allows, and take away the AP's place in the news ecosystem. Reuters has done some smart things, and CNN started to make it clear that it wanted to take on the AP in the wire service business. But, it hasn't really done all that much on that front. However, with news coming out that CNN may be among those news organizations getting ready to ditch its AP relationship, perhaps it's a sign that it's finally gearing up to really try to take on the AP in the wire business.

Filed Under: wire service
Companies: ap, cnn