We’ve made reference before to vendors who could feel the pinch as the media world changes. In response to Jay Small’s questions about AP’s strategy vis-a-vis Google News, Adrian Holovaty makes an interesting point:
What, really, is the point of the AP in the age of the Internet? My
(quite possibly incorrect) understanding is that it did two things for
print newspapers:1. Gave them 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.Seems to me both of these
things are just not that valuable to news operations on the Web. Does
it make sense for a local news site to have national news coverage when
the Web sites for CNN, the NYT, et al, are a click away?
