Media - Wire

NEW YORK: The Associated Press will be ending its highly-touted “asap” service in October, E&P has learned. Staffers were notified this morning about its October 31 demise as a stand alone. It’s not known if any layoffs will come. About 200 newspapers subscribed to the service. It was launched in 2005 as a response to the growth of blogs and so-called youth tabs, and had 24 staff members. It...

NEW YORK: The Associated Press will be ending its highly-touted "asap" service in October, E&P has learned. Staffers were notified this morning about its October 31 demise as a stand alone. It's not known if any layoffs will come. About 200 newspapers subscribed to the service. It was launched in 2005 as a response to the growth of blogs and so-called youth tabs, and had 24 staff members. It...

SAN FRANCISCO - The Associated Press will intensify its efforts to protect its copyrights on the Web and possibly uncover new sources of revenue by working with a Silicon Valley startup that's trying to help the media gain more control over digital content. Under an agreement to be announced Thursday, the AP will subscribe to a service developed by Attributor Corp. to track how its stories are...

Canadian publisher Thomson Corp has agreed to buy Reuters for about £8.7 billion ($17.2 billion), creating the world’s leading provider of news and data for professional markets. Reuters Founders Share Company, which has the power to block a change of ownership at the 156-year-old company, backed the deal but it still needs regulatory clearance and shareholder approval, Thomson and Reuters said in...

The Associated Press has launched a weblog aimed at younger audiences. Far And Wide provides signposts to the news stories flying across the AP's global news wires, from the agency staff's own perspective. According to the debut entry, it will be "a fresh way into the news, one that puts you squarely in the places where news is happening, and in the newsrooms where reporters' stories go out to the...

NEW YORK: Her day usually starts around 5:30 a.m. in her Montclair, N.J., home, when she consults her Treo to check news from Europe and Asia while many neighbors are still sleeping. After a few quick calls to foreign news bureaus, she heads off to catch the train. It's unlikely that any of her fellow passengers on NJ Transit's Midtown Direct to New York give her more than a passing glance as they...

Agence France-Presse and Google Inc have settled a copyright lawsuit, clearing the way for Google to post snippets of the French news agency’s news and photos online, the two companies said on Friday. The two companies, in a joint statement, said the accord allows the Internet giant to post AFP content on Google News and other services. Terms of the pact have not been disclosed. Agence France...

The moribund International Islamic News Agency (IINA), a media front of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), is set to for a revamp by the year-end. Turkey's Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Secretary-General of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), a 57-member block of Islamic states, attends a meeting in Islamabad, Pakistan on Sunday, February 25, 2007. Ihsanoglu said at the Riyadh...

The Associated Press (AP) has entered into an agreement with Voxant Inc to distribute a selection of its news stories, videos and photographs to blogs and other websites through Voxant's advertising-supported syndication network. Voxant, a startup company based in Reston, US, has deals in place to syndicate news from a number of major outlets including Reuters, Agence France-Press, the Canadian...

(February 20, 2007) — My suggestion for publishers, editors and news managers dealing daily with the cost-cutting that plagues newsrooms around the country is to fire someone. But don’t fire a reporter, copy editor, or a photog. What I’m proposing might not win me any friends at the major wire services. I’m certainly not going to win any popularity contests. But allow me to get a few points across...