Counterpoint: The Associated Press Is Necessary and More Important Than Ever

Chris Lynn and I were going back and forth a few days ago about the Associated Press and the state of the newspaper industry. Chris followed up our twitter conversation with a solid post on why he thinks the "AP is outdated and losing relevancy."

The AP has been a burning effigy for the bloggers and twitterers for the last year. The AP has brought a lot of this heat on by itself because of their slow adaptation to online news and the shifting revenue models for newspapers and online publications. They have had to react quickly to this shift due to the economic conditions that are forcing publications to quit the cooperative.

Over the last year, we have seen publications like the Tribune Blade, The Columbus Dispatch, The Bakersfield Californian, The Spokesman-Review, The Yakima Herald-Republic, Wenatchee World, and even the Tribue Company leave the AP or file an option to leave the AP (apparently the "AP requires two years' notice for members to cut ties").

Last summer we saw some publications form their own 'Hyperlocal AP' as a result. Ironically, this move validates the need for the Associated Press.

The AP was created in 1846 in order for five New York City newspapers to receive news and reports from the fields of battle during the Mexican American War. In 1900 the Associated Press was set up as a Non-Profit Membership Organization in order to protect itself against people using the cooperative for free.

"In 1891 it was revealed that UPI was getting AP news for free causing a rift among the subset groups and most defected to the UPI. AP responded by striking a monopoly deal with Reuters in England, Havas in France and Wolff in Germany. Most of the papers returned to the AP.

"In 1898 the AP discovered that Chicago Inter Ocean was using news from a wire set up by then rival New York Sun publisher William M. Laffan. AP refused service to the Inter Ocean and the paper filed suit with the Illinois Supreme Court which ruled that the AP was similar to a public utility and could not refuse service."

It's amazing that the AP is going through similar trials over 100 years later due to aggregators and the dominance of web news.

Without the Associated Press, subscribing news organizations would not have been able to publish timely and accurate news on events ranging from the Civil War to WWI to WWII to Bush's National Guard Service toRick Wagoner's resignation, threats by Somali Pirates, #AmazonFail, the Russian incursion into Georgia, to Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson 'taking a break.'

The Associated Press has "243 news bureaus and serves 121 countries." There is no way news can be reported fairly, timely and unbiased without an organization of this type and size. It is even more important to have the AP because of platforms like Twitter and Facebook where memes can spread instantaneously, without the benefit of an editor or fact-checking. There is no question that the immediacy of news is a good thing for all people. This immediacy also inherently lacks the patience, perspective and process that news and information must go through. The absence of this perpetuates incorrect information.

Twitter updates, Facebook, RSS, email alerts all ensure that people receive news in near-real time. It, however, doesn't ensure that people will receive accurate news or corrections. All of these platforms, devices and portals are part of the seemingly infinite echo chamber and, without a filter or editor, we'd be doomed to see that the first iReport will be the only report.

While blogs, twitter, and wikipedia have all been the resources that broke major news stories over the last five years, they've also been a haven for disinformation, misinformation, lies, errors, etc; So have Mainstream Media publications.

Essentially, accurate news is fleeting. When the World needs accurate information from the most and least remote locations, bloggers and twitterers just won't suffice. The AP is necessary to the Fourth Estate and the Fourth Estate is necessary to Democracy.

(Photo from newsroom-magazine.com)

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