CNN Pitches a Cheaper Wire Service to Newspapers

CNN, in the afterglow of an election season of record ratings for cable news, is elbowing in on a new line of business: catering to financially strained newspapers looking for an alternative to The Associated Press.

For nearly a month, a trial version of CNN’s wire service has been on display in some newspapers. But this week editors from about 30 papers will visit Atlanta to hear CNN’s plans to broaden a service to provide coverage of big national and international events — and maybe local ones — on a smaller scale and at a lower cost than The A.P.

“The reality is we don’t have a lot of relationships with newspapers,” said Jim Walton, president of CNN Worldwide. “We have relationships with TV stations around the world.” Mr. Walton said the meeting this week, which CNN has billed the “CNN Newspaper Summit,” is “kind of a get-to-know-you.”

With its CNN Wire, the company is going up against the largest news-gathering operation in the world in The A.P., and it must convince editors that it can offer something that is well outside its broadcast expertise — which may not be a tough task given the dire circumstances newspapers face. In addition, a number of newspapers are unhappy with the cost of The A.P., a nonprofit corporation that is owned by the 1,400 papers that are its members. Some newspapers have even given notice that they intend to leave The A.P. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/01/business/media/01cnn.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Papers Facing Financial Trouble Are Leaving the A.P. to Cut Costs

Benjamin J. Marrison, the editor of The Columbus Dispatch.

The New York Times – For most of its 137-year history, The Columbus Dispatch has carried articles and images from The Associated Press. Like most big American newspapers, it supplements the work of its own staff with dozens of items daily from The A.P.

That may end soon.

Unhappy with both the A.P. service and its price — more than $800,000 a year at a time when The Dispatch’s finances are severely pinched — the paper on Friday took the once-unthinkable step of saying it would drop the service.

What had been a minor newspaper rebellion against The A.P. suddenly grew much more serious last week, when the Tribune Company, one of the largest newspaper chains, said on Thursday that it would drop out of the association, followed by The Dispatch’s announcement. A handful of papers have made the same move over the last few months, but with the exception of The Star Tribune of Minneapolis, they were relatively small.

Tribune, in disclosing the plan to sever its ties with The A.P., voiced no complaints about the service, saying only that it needed to cut costs. The move raised the prospect of major Tribune papers like The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune publishing without the aid of a wire service that has been an essential part of American journalism since the cooperative was established more than a century and a half ago.

But editors and publishers at some other papers have become vocal critics of the way The A.P. operates, saying that it charges more than they can afford, delivers too little of what they need and — particularly galling to them — is sometimes acting as their competitor on the Internet.http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/20/business/media/20ap.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Tribune considers dropping AP

The Wall Street Journal – Tribune Co., one of the country’s biggest newspaper chains, signaled it may drop its contract with the Associated Press, highlighting the growing rift between the news cooperative and the papers it was created to serve.

The AP requires two years’ notice for members to cut ties. Tribune issued the notice this week, entitling the chain to drop its AP contract in 2010. The notice isn’t a firm commitment to sever ties, however.

Tribune, which publishes eight major dailies including the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, would be the largest newspaper chain to scuttle its relationship with the 162-year-old organization. Other papers — chafing against AP’s fees and a feeling that the AP no longer considers newspapers to be important customers — have sought to drop AP services or find alternatives.http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122420082111842869.html