Newspapers across the country are going through their budgeting processes for 2009. And anyone whose followed the newspaper business at all in recent years would know thats an especially unpleasant task.
The Associated Press, the wire service that provides state national and international news to almost every daily newspaper in the country, isnt finding this year so enjoyable, either.
A New York Times headline today reads Some papers in financial trouble are leaving the AP to cut costs. It mentions The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, which last Friday took the once-unthinkable step of saying it would drop the service. And it mentioned the Tribune Companys decision last week to drop out of the AP. Some other already had given notice they are dropping the service, the Times says, but with the exception of the Minneapolis Star Tribune they were relatively small.
As the NYT so correctly says, the AP wire service has been an essential part of American journalism since the cooperative was established more than a century and a half ago.
Its hard for me to imagine large, daily newspapers without Associated Press wire stories. But it is getting increasingly easy to imagine smaller papers without it.
Stories from the AP are used less and less often in The Monroe Times. There are many days when only one or two news wire stories are able to be fit into the pages we have to work with. While I was working on Saturdays sports section on Friday night, it struck me that we had no room for any AP stories. Outside of our local sports coverage, we only had room for the most basic sports agate NFL standings, NHL standings and a college football score.
The fact is that local news is the franchise for small papers, and increasingly so for larger newspapers. The AP adds a depth and a global perspective to papers, for sure, but I dont think readers really look to The Monroe Times or others like our paper for that anymore.
Do you?
The Associated Press, the wire service that provides state national and international news to almost every daily newspaper in the country, isnt finding this year so enjoyable, either.
A New York Times headline today reads Some papers in financial trouble are leaving the AP to cut costs. It mentions The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, which last Friday took the once-unthinkable step of saying it would drop the service. And it mentioned the Tribune Companys decision last week to drop out of the AP. Some other already had given notice they are dropping the service, the Times says, but with the exception of the Minneapolis Star Tribune they were relatively small.
As the NYT so correctly says, the AP wire service has been an essential part of American journalism since the cooperative was established more than a century and a half ago.
Its hard for me to imagine large, daily newspapers without Associated Press wire stories. But it is getting increasingly easy to imagine smaller papers without it.
Stories from the AP are used less and less often in The Monroe Times. There are many days when only one or two news wire stories are able to be fit into the pages we have to work with. While I was working on Saturdays sports section on Friday night, it struck me that we had no room for any AP stories. Outside of our local sports coverage, we only had room for the most basic sports agate NFL standings, NHL standings and a college football score.
The fact is that local news is the franchise for small papers, and increasingly so for larger newspapers. The AP adds a depth and a global perspective to papers, for sure, but I dont think readers really look to The Monroe Times or others like our paper for that anymore.
Do you?
