Whatever else Lou Boccardi is doing as head of the world's largest newsgathering organization, he reads the wire. Obsessively. He reads it on his computer at his New Rochelle home in the mornings before work. All day, an old-style wire printer buzzes and whines in a tiny closet in his corner office on the seventh floor of the Associated Press headquarters at 50 Rockefeller Plaza, spitting out the daily report. Whatever he hasn't read by the time he catches the evening train home -- often a stack several inches thick -- goes with him. He is not shy about calling the general desk from the commuter phone on the train with changes. It's as though each of the twenty million words the AP churns out daily must pass before Boccardi's careful eye. "I'm obliged to look at what we do," he says. "To not do that would be like a newspaper publisher who never reads his own paper."
For fifteen years, Louis D. Boccardi, sixty-three, has been the equivalent of a publisher -- the president and c.e.o. of the AP. And for all those years he has held tight to the AP's unique and ambitious mission -- to cover the world thoroughly and yardstick straight -- in a media world that has changed tremendously. It took, for instance, just six seconds for the AP to get all 130,000 words of the Starr Report to members in 1998. To move that many words when Watergate broke would have taken more than thirty hours. Through all the change, though, Boccardi's AP has remained competitive and the dependable backbone of the news business. "Thirty years ago, when a story showed up with an AP byline, you knew you could accept it as true, that it would be fair," he says. "In the midst of all this change, it is important that we talk about that. The core beliefs. The AP standards. We are different in many ways, but I don't think that has changed."
But the AP's position in the media world is more complicated as the twentieth century gives way to the twenty-first. And being first, being accurate, and being fair -- while still crucial -- may no longer be enough.
Consider some of the ways that the media landscape has shifted in just the last two decades, creating a slew of new competitors and diminishing some of the things that made the AP unique. UPI, the AP's longtime rival, faded as Reuters went public and raised its U.S. profile. Bloomberg emerged to cover the booming financial news niche, and now is exploring the possibility of a general news service. Newspaper groups evolved into profit-driven media companies whose interests occasionally conflict with the AP's. Supplemental wires blossomed to compete with the AP for space in the daily newspapers. Nonstop cable news, led by CNN, eroded the breaking-news franchise of newspapers. And breaking news itself -- the AP's core business -- is becoming generic. "Wallpaper" is how Bill Keller, the managing editor of The New York Times, describes it. People consume news all day on TV, radio, countless Web sites, Palm Pilots, cell phones, even on tiny screens in elevators. Scoops, such as they are, are quickly matched and the story moves on.
"Our competition is niche by niche," says Jon Wolman, the AP's new executive editor. "We've never had more or stronger competition."
Now, the Internet creates a challenge unlike any the AP has faced. It is broad, ubiquitous, deep, and interactive. Anyone with a computer and a phone line can play. It changes how newspapers think of their audiences, and thus their competitors. "We see hits on our Web site from all over the country and the world," says Reid MacCluggage, publisher of The Day in New London, Connecticut. "We build submarines here. We are a pharmaceutical center. We have Indian reservations with casinos. People are interested in these things."
The Internet also diminishes the AP's traditional advantage in the distribution of news. Capitolwire.com, a year-old wire service out of Pennsylvania, is testing the marketplace with a chunk of venture capital, a few seasoned reporters, and the Internet). Not long ago, the AP and Reuters were essentially the only ones who could get a photo from New York to London instantly. Today, anyone with a laptop can do it.
But perhaps the biggest problem for the AP is that the Internet magnifies an inherent weakness in the wire service's cooperative structure. The AP must serve the needs of the more than 1,500 newspapers that own it, from The New York Times to the Daily Guide in Waynesville, Missouri. And often they need very different things. The Internet exacerbates this situation in a couple of ways. First, the newspaper industry is still trying to tame the Web. So the AP must find ways to help members develop their online operations, even when the members aren't sure exactly what they want. "If you asked ten members where they want their papers to be in five years, you'd hear a lot of confusion," says Wolman. "We hear that confusion, too. It's a very tumultuous period." Second, the Internet is as much an economic force as a journalistic one. The AP must develop its business in cyberspace without competing with its members who are also trying to establish a presence there.
For example, the AP's Web site, the WIRE, may never be the kind of dynamic portal site it could be given the AP's reach and resources. Why? Because members don't want it to be. They don't want their readers bypassing their own sites to get news from the AP. Currently, the WIRE gets about 600,000 unique visitors a month compared to 7.3 million for CNN. You can't get to the AP site without going through a member's site, but only 450 newspapers -- out of 1,200 with Web sites -- currently subscribe to the WIRE. In part, this is because papers want to build their own sites into regional or national portals. They want to use AP stories to help do this, but they don't want to lose readers to the wire. "If four years ago we had been able to take off with our Web site," says Ruth Gersh, editorial director of AP Digital, "would we be as big as CNN today? Probably, but that's not what the AP does."
No one is writing the AP's obit. News organizations still depend on it to varying degrees to fill their columns with stories, photos, and stock tables. With 241 bureaus around the world, the AP has more than twice as many as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times combined, and fifty-six more than Reuters. And with bureaus in every state, it still has a lock on the all-important state and local news. "No newspaper can survive without the AP," says Robert Port, a former editor of the AP's investigative team. "No matter how many Web sites you create, to bang out the news you've got to be where it's happening, and no one else is."
But the challenges the AP faces are real and they are formidable -- on the Internet, in the newsroom, and in its cooperative structure.
"It is a very difficult choice they have to make," says Mark Weinberg, a former managing editor of Knight Ridder's Internet operation. "Are they going to distribute news as widely as possible on the Internet, or restrict themselves to member services and supporting member efforts? Are they going to try to be in the business themselves, with an ad-driven product, or not? It will take someone with guts to make those calls."
Boccardi has been making such calls at the AP since 1985. He says he has no plans to retire, and AP bylaws don't require him to. But the AP board has discussed the issue of his successor. "Without going into specifics, the executive committee is constantly aware of and considering the future," says Donald Newhouse, chairman of the AP board. And while Wolman is widely considered the heir apparent, no decision has been made and no executive at the AP will talk about it. Regardless, whoever eventually replaces Boccardi will be leading a different AP through a different world.
CULTURE OF CAUTION
In many ways, the AP's cooperative structure has served it well. For example, the AP gets the expertise of a board of directors that includes the leaders of the major newspaper and broadcast operations. Also, as the newspaper industry went public and felt the pressure from Wall Street, the AP remained free of the yoke of quarterly returns. The AP is not beholden to any one interest, and is therefore free, as Mark Fritz, a former Pulitzer Prize-winning AP writer, says, "to send me into Somalia with $10,000 taped to my ankles." Even so, the AP prides itself on its efficiency, both journalistically and financially. "They will spend whatever is necessary to get the story," says Terry Anderson, the former Middle East correspondent who was kidnapped and held in Lebanon for six years by Islamic militants. "But if you can make the company car last an extra year, you will win points with Lou."
This efficiency -- or frugality -- is reflected in the relatively low profile the AP keeps in media-driven New York. AP headquarters is in midtown Manhattan, near the Today show set and a brief walk from a cluster of major media outlets. But it would be just as much at home -- maybe more so -- in Manhattan, Kansas. "Look at who we are and what we do," says Wolman. "We are a cooperative of newspapers and broadcasters. We don't have an independent brand, to use today's buzzword. I don't say we're anonymous, but much of what we do is folded into someone else's product."
But the need to serve the many masters of a cooperative breeds a sort of caution that can affect the AP's journalism and its business operations. "There is this culture of caution at the AP," says Fred Bayles, who spent twenty years there before leaving in 1997 for USA Today. "We've all gone through some frustration with it, and it is at times taken to the extreme. But it is that way for a reason. If I do something wrong at my paper, it is bad for my paper. If I do something wrong for the AP, it is bad for 1,500 papers."
When the AP story on the massacre of civilians by U.S. troops at No Gun Ri in the early days of the Korean War won this year's Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting, the wire service knocked a persistent monkey from its back. It was the AP's forty-sixth Pulitzer, but its first for investigative journalism. And despite some well-publicized problems with one of the sources, the story provided something of an antidote to the long-standing criticism that the AP isn't comfortable doing controversial investigative stories. The AP management, and many of its former writers, call this criticism unfair. The theory, though, is grounded in that "culture of caution" created by the cooperative: the AP is wary of upsetting members. Good investigative journalism leads to conclusions, a judgment of right and wrong. And, as Terry Anderson says, "The AP has not had an opinion in 150 years." In fact, investigative reporting isn't even called investigative at the AP. It's "hard-edge reporting." And whether fair or not, some of the most visible U.S. government and military scandals of the last thirty years -- My Lai, Watergate, and Iran-Contra among them -- have been followed by questions from inside and outside the AP about the wire service's unwillingness to lead on such stories. "Investigative reporting makes the AP very nervous," says Bob Egelko, who left the AP in June after thirty years when he was pulled from the federal court beat in San Francisco, allegedly for missing key testimony in the suit challenging Hearst Corporation's attempt to buy the San Francisco Chronicle. "It is no great accident that No Gun Ri was their first investigative Pulitzer. That is not how it has seen its role."
Mark Fritz says that wasn't his experience. He cites a story he did in 1995 on controversial newsprint contracts that major U.S. newspaper companies -- The New York Times and Knight Ridder among them -- had with a company that logged in an ancient Canadian rain forest. "I always felt you could do anything you wanted at the AP," he says.
Wolman acknowledges that the cooperative structure doesn't allow the "sharp attitude" that often goes with investigative reporting. "But we don't want sharp attitude," he says. "We want to produce a fair and balanced report in all areas, spot news or investigative."
But whatever No Gun Ri did to change this perception of the AP, in some ways it only dragged the wire's struggle to broaden its journalistic mission into the spotlight. More than a year elapsed between the first draft in July 1998 and the version of No Gun Ri that went out on the wire in September 1999. During that time, the editor handling the story, Robert Port, was reassigned and eventually quit. Wolman, who had been elevated from D.C. bureau chief to managing editor in late 1998, was brought in to finish the job. In May of this year, he replaced Bill Ahearn, the executive editor who was abruptly fired for reasons that have never been publicly aired but involved issues of management style and effectiveness that clearly ran deeper than any disagreement over No Gun Ri. (Boccardi would not discuss Ahearn or his firing.) And there has been a running debate ever since the story moved about when it was ready, who supported it, and who did not. "No Gun Ri went to the wire when we were satisfied we had it cold," says Boccardi. "If we were afraid of the story, we could have pulled the plug at any point. We spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on that. Would I have allowed that if it was a story I fundamentally didn't want? There was a difference of opinion about when it was ready for the wire, but the AP's conscience is clear and my conscience is clear."
Ahearn created the investigative team and hired Port to run it. That team was dismantled after No Gun Ri, but Wolman says a new team is being assembled. Ahearn had been leading a charge to expand the AP's enterprise and investigative work, and embolden its writing at the bureau level. In addition to Port, he hired a writing coach, a computer-assisted-reporting specialist, and someone to turn the AP library into a state-of-the-art research center. "Bill understood in a conceptual way exactly what the AP needs to do to survive as a news organization," says Port, who now works on the investigative team at the New York Daily News. "I'm talking editorially, not financially or technologically. He wanted more enterprise, more aggressive reporting in the bureaus."
Whatever his differences with Ahearn, Boccardi agrees that the AP must evolve journalistically. Today, he says, the AP must "write with authority." It must do the big stories on things like child labor and guardianship laws and No Gun Ri. "Without those stories, our value diminishes in the climate our members have to compete in," he says. The AP needs to do more enterprise and investigative work because newspapers demand it. Because the supplemental wires -- against which the AP competes -- provide it. And because the job market for journalists is strong. An AP reporter stuck doing write-throughs and covering too many legislative committee meetings is more likely to be enticed away with the promise of more money and greater editorial freedom.
Comparatively low pay in major urban markets -- coupled with the exacting pace and relative anonymity of wire-service life -- has long been a reason for talent to leave the AP. In most places, AP salaries stack up well. But in large cities, AP reporter salaries generally lag behind their newspaper counterparts. Wolman says people don't leave the AP over money, that there are always other factors involved. But low pay was cited as an issue in a number of interviews for this story with former AP reporters and editors. "They have a massive salary problem," says Rick Hampson, who spent twenty-one years with the AP before bolting in 1997 for USA Today. The AP's company-wide turnover rate is 12 percent. Turnover at individual bureaus is not tracked, according to Janis Magin, a corporate spokeswoman.
Under the new contract AP negotiated with the Wire Service Guild, base pay for an AP reporter in New York or D.C. with six years of experience is $55,000. At Newsday, a reporter with that much experience could start at $78,000. At The Boston Globe, the minimum salary would be $65,000. The dot-com explosion and booming economy have only exacerbated this problem. Things got bad enough that in August the AP began offering a finder's fee of up to $2,000 to any employee who brings in someone who is hired and stays at least six months.
The AP has always had good writers. But it isn't enough anymore to just have a Poet's Corner -- as the old stable of AP feature writers was called -- or a handful of stars who can drop into the day's big story and work their magic. The challenge now for the AP is to extend that good writing, that enterprise and investigative reporting, to every bureau. But it must do it without slipping even a bit on its spot news coverage. Because if AP members want the beautifully written enterprise piece, they want it after they get all the day's spot news. "We train more than we ever did, we provide time to do those stories," says Boccardi. "But never for a minute do we move away from spot news. We try to do both. I can't use the word schizophrenia, but we try to do both." The latest round of member surveys, finished last year, reminded AP management just how important that is. "If fresh spot news is their top priority," says Wolman, "then stories with context and authority are next. I mean right next."
Doing both requires more people, and the AP has added staff -- fifty editorial employees in the last three years, mostly in bureaus other than New York and D.C. But there is still a way to go. "You don't have to look far to find people in the bureaus who say they are undermanned," Boccardi says. "We've added staff where we can, in a rational way, and we're not finished. I don't know what's enough when you're trying to do everything."
The effort has paid off in some bureaus. Bill Baskervill, a reporter in the Richmond bureau, which has a dozen editorial employees, has done solid investigative stories in recent years on things like the lack of sprinklers in college dorms and conditions in state mental hospitals. In 1998, he won the Gramling Award, AP's highest reporting honor. "I suppose I'm fortunate because my boss gives me free reign," says Baskervill, who has spent all thirty-two of his years at the AP in Richmond. "I get at least four days a week of enterprise time."
The reality, though, for many AP reporters is that there still isn't time for both. "The entire time I was at the AP, that was a struggle," says Jim Strader, who left the AP in May after ten years, most of them in the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, bureau, to work for capitolwire.com. "The AP wanted page-one stories in every paper, but the reality is that the demands placed on you by members -- 'Can you cover this?' 'We need you to cover that' -- and the demands from the news editors who need to keep the wire full of news, leave you little time to do those bigger stories." Strader said a big project on Pennsylvania's elderly languished on the bureau's planning book for two years, and was still undone when he left, because no one had the time.
It may be that no matter how many people it adds, the AP can never completely escape this problem of having to be all things to all members. "We have always had, and will continue to have, enormous conflicts over how we use manpower," says Doug Willis, who retired from AP's Sacramento bureau this year after thirty-one years with the wire. "Because we have members with vastly different needs." For example, the AP has seven editorial employees in its Sacramento bureau. The Los Angeles Times has eleven. "They want us to do the things they don't want to bother with," Willis says of the Times. "Same with the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Diego paper, and a few others. Then we serve a lot of papers with 25,000, even 100,000 circulation who have one person or no one in Sacramento. They rely on us for everything. So that tension will always be there."
AN AP IPO?
Boccardi says the benefits of the cooperative "far outweigh" any negatives. But not everyone agrees that the cooperative structure is the best business model for the new era. "You've got to be willing to take risks in this new environment," says Charles Brumback, former chairman of Tribune Company. "The AP is a risk avoider. All cooperatives are risk avoiders."
There are those in the media business, including former AP insiders, who, like Brumback, think the AP should restructure, become a for-profit operation in total or in part. Maybe spin off its online operation. The idea of spinning off part of the AP has been discussed by management, but there is currently no serious consideration of structural change, according to both Boccardi and Patrick O'Brien, the AP's chief financial officer. Advocates of a for-profit AP say it would make it easier for it to develop as a cutting-edge newsgathering and distribution business. A for-profit AP could raise more money, it wouldn't have to measure everything against its members, and it would be subject to the discipline that comes with operating in the public realm. "Their performance would be visible to everyone," says Brumback. "As it is, there isn't any urgency in an organization like that to excel."
O'Brien acknowledges that the AP cannot raise hundreds of millions of dollars simply by selling stock, the way it could if it were for-profit. But he says there is presently no need for the AP to raise that kind of money, and it has no trouble borrowing what it does need. "They [banks] know the AP is an institution, that it is not going to go out of business," he says. "There is a willingness to lend us what we need." To start APTN, its video service, for example, the AP borrowed about $50 million, easily its largest investment. O'Brien says he can't rule out the possibility that they would spin off part of the AP in the future. It would allow the AP to offer its employees stock options, for instance, which could help the wire service reduce turnover. "If we ever need to raise hundreds of millions of dollars," O'Brien says, "the best way to do it -- maybe the only way to do it -- would be to spin part of the company off. But we've carefully considered these things and decided we don't need, nor do we want, to do it now."
And indeed there would be tradeoffs if the AP became a for-profit operation. "I'm an editor in the hinterland," says David Hawpe, editorial director of the Louisville Courier-Journal, "and if I call Lou Boccardi there is absolutely no question that I will get him on the phone. It doesn't mean he will do what I want, but I get the chance to make my case. If the AP were public, it would be much more difficult to feel a part of it. I call Lou as a member, not as a supplicant."
Another thing that has happened in the last twenty years to complicate the AP's cooperative structure is the increasing consolidation of ownership. As media companies grow larger and more diverse, areas of tension can develop between their strategic interests and the AP's strategic interests. Representatives of these companies still sit on the AP board, and have a say in AP policy. "We sell news, too, through our news service affiliates," says Jack Fuller, president of the Tribune Company's publishing operation. "That's a tension." Consider this possible scenario: The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post already have a news service. So do Knight Ridder and the Tribune Company Now that Tribune owns the L.A. Times, why couldn't these four media heavyweights form a joint service? It still wouldn't have the reach of the AP, but it would be a major force both nationally and internationally. "The big papers could start an alternative wire service if they wanted to," says Mark Fritz, who now works for the L.A. Times. "You could almost say it is already happening."
Even if such a joint venture took off, it wouldn't be aimed at replacing what the AP does on a day-to-day basis. And it still wouldn't challenge AP dominance at the state level, which is in many ways the wire's most important asset. Bill Keller, of The New York Times, says the distinction between newspaper wire services, newspaper Web sites, and the AP is becoming less stark. For example, the Times's news service originally was designed to provide its subscribers with stories that would run in the next day's newspaper a little early. Now it is cranking out copy nearly around the clock to feed its subscribers' growing online operations. Still, Keller says, the difference is real. "We don't want to replicate what the AP does," he says. "We are not going to want to chase every plane crash or every third-level coup."
WEB WOES
Fifteen years ago, the AP was selling stories to Internet pioneers like CompuServe and Prodigy, and no one cared. By the early 1990s, however, the newspaper industry awoke to the reality that something called the World Wide Web was after its precious classified ad revenue. The simultaneous rise of the Internet as both economic engine and journalistic player has created something of a Catch-22 for the AP. With UPI gone, the AP now serves nearly every newspaper in the country and most broadcast outlets. There is no more room for growth in these traditional markets. The things AP is doing journalistically cost money. And because it has promised to keep member dues as low as possible, the AP must find other ways to subsidize its journalism. "Newspapers are not going to pay the costs of all the things they are doing," says Frank Daniels, a former chairman of the AP board of directors. "And they will start to lose some of the smaller members if the price gets too high." If that happens, Daniels notes, the AP loses its all-important blanket coverage.
This need to develop so-called nontraditional revenue streams has been true at the AP for at least the last twenty years. And under Boccardi, the wire service has been adept at finding slices of its vast operation to sell to members and nonmembers alike. AdSEND, for example, uses spare capacity in the AP's satellite transmission system to allow advertisers to create a digital ad and send it to multiple papers with the push of a button. Projected AP revenue for 2000 is $600 million. About a quarter is expected to come from nontraditional sources. Meanwhile, the percentage of revenue from member dues continues to drop. Newspapers accounted for 45 percent of AP revenue in 1990. Last year, that had fallen to 32 percent. In the same period, broadcast services fell from 20 percent to 15 percent of revenue. The AP is increasingly making its money outside its traditional markets. Today, that means cyberspace. And that puts it on a collision course with some of its largest members who are also competing for eyeballs and advertising with the AOLs and the Yahoos -- precisely the market AP must tap if it is to make enough money to keep from raising member dues.
"This has been an enormous struggle for them," says Terry Anderson. "They did torturous, torturous studies to figure out how the AP can be an Internet presence without competing with its members."
Consider the current unrest among members over the wire service's sale of content to nonmember sites like AOL and Yahoo. The Washington Post, for example, is investing heavily in its Web site in an effort to both give the paper more of a national presence and establish washingtonpost.com as a portal site for news and information. "This is potentially a strategic crossroads for the AP," says Steve Coll, the Post's managing editor. "Right now, the AP is selling its wire -- which is produced in part from the resources of its owners -- to portal sites that are competing with its owners."
Tom Slaughter, who runs AP Digital, the new arm set up this year to consolidate sales of AP content to nonmember Internet customers, acknowledges Coll's criticism. But he says the AP board of directors -- which is elected to speak for the membership -- supports the mission of AP Digital. "The reality for us," Slaughter says, "is that we serve a market that is fundamentally mature. So if we are going to improve the level of services to our owners we must find ways to fund it, and the area that is growing the fastest in terms of revenue is that served by AP Digital."
In the broadest sense, though, the AP's two missions appear to be in conflict. "It is a cooperative that must serve its members," says Howard Schneider, managing editor at Newsday. "But it also must become a viable business in the new, digital media world. That is a crucial question for the AP. Will it remain primarily a service for newspapers, or become a multimedia service for anyone who wants it?"
Sounds like the AP has already made that decision. "We are an information wholesaler," says Slaughter. "We want to be in as many venues and as many markets as possible." Slaughter wouldn't say how many customers AP Digital has, only that he expects it to be double by the end of the year what it was in January. Reuters -- which moved aggressively into Internet sales in the mid-1990s, unencumbered by the politics of a cooperative -- sells content to 900 Web sites. Slaughter says if you combine AP Digital clients with member Web sites that use AP copy, the AP has "at least that many" online customers.
Slaughter -- and everyone else at the AP -- is quick to note that the wire service sells only its national and international reports to nonmember customers. The state wire -- where the majority of member-generated stories run -- is not for sale and probably won't be any time soon. Still, there is a concern among some AP members that as AP stories become increasingly available in free, nonmember venues, the value of the wire service will change. Part of the AP's value to large papers and broadcast outlets, for example, is as a tip sheet. They learn from AP's comprehensive spot news coverage where to send their own reporters to do in-depth pieces, trend stories, and analyses. "This is far from their only value to us, and I am not prepared to say there will come a time when we don't need the AP anymore," says Bill Keller. "But I can certainly say I can foresee when their value to us would diminish because this information is available online for free. And our contract negotiations with them would get very interesting at that point."
And it isn't only the large papers that are troubled by this. "I do see some potential problems there," says Janet Weaver, executive editor of the 110,000-circulation Sarasota Herald-Tribune. "The Web is an area we have moved into very aggressively."
Wolman acknowledges that the Internet has the potential to change the AP's value to its traditional customers, but plays down the significance of this particular cyber skirmish. "The ubiquitousness of news on the Internet should not in any way diminish our value to The New York Times," he says. "Does that mean that the Internet will never change our value in any respect? No. But I don't know how. I don't take anything for granted in this new environment, but nobody knows how all this is going to evolve."
Despite these "bumps," as Boccardi calls them, the AP is adapting. By some measures, the AP is ideally suited to this new world. The AP, they are fond of saying at 50 Rockefeller Plaza, was the original Internet. Demand for fast, well-written, well-edited news that is reliable and updated around the clock -- essentially what the AP has been doing for 152 years -- has never been higher. And over the last couple of years, the AP has found more creative ways to help its members online. For example, it has:
- Replaced its a.m.-p.m. news cycle with a twenty-four-hour cycle that reflects the non-stop nature of the Internet.
- Added a navigation model on its Web site that puts links at the bottom of stories to allow members to access deeper levels of information if they want.
- Begun posting major projects -- like No Gun Ri and a series on the spread of the English language around the world -- on its Web site.
- Developed specialized tool sites -- one last year on Y2K and another this year on politics -- that give members access to databases, links, and other information they can use in their own reporting.
"We are building a family of services for the Internet that is separate from the newspaper wire," says Wick Temple, the AP's head of member services. For example, the AP is currently testing a version of its state news report for online use, and expects to have it available in every state by the end of the year.
The AP is also adding staff to do niche-oriented news in areas that member surveys have indicated are in demand -- business, technology, sports, entertainment, health, and science. Since last year, it has added an entertainment editor, a celebrity editor, six writers, and a photo editor to its print and online staffs devoted to entertainment news.
A major census-related project -- with print, broadcast, and online elements -- is planned for next year. In addition to the AP's state and national stories, for a fee members will be able to get intensely local data online that they can use in their own stories.
"If the AP is going to be successful in the future," says Wolman, "it is going to have to create a different type of coverage in which all these formats converge. This census project is either a really great example, or a premature one."
SACRIFICE
In interview after interview for this story, people used military metaphors and a notion of sacrifice to describe life at the AP. Always there, in the trenches, toiling anonymously to inform the world. "People who have served in the Marines, or had a Jesuit education, would thrive in the AP," says David Beard, a former AP editor who is now deputy foreign editor at The Boston Globe. "You must understand the idea of sacrifice."
As long as the AP remains a member-owned cooperative, it will continue to sacrifice for the sake of its members. Its Web site will never get the traffic it could. Its writers will never be free of the 150-year-old assumption, "Let the wire cover it." And no matter how much good writing and in-depth reporting it produces, it will never completely escape the fact that its owners don't want it to outshine their own reporters. That is who the AP is. The Internet doesn't change that, it only complicates the situation. Somehow, the Associated Press must find its way in this new world without abandoning its unique and unsung role.
Brent Cunningham is CJR's associate editor.
