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Posts with tag: associated-press | Return to BloggersBlog.com Homepage
Bloggers to AP: You're Dead to Me
Last week the Associated Press began taking a very aggressive stance on the use of its content. They threatened the Drudge Retort with take-down notices over several items that contained very short 39 to 79 word quotes from its articles. Many bloggers slammed the AP's new tactics. Now, the New York Times reports that the AP is going to set guidelines about how its content can be used on the Internet later this week even though bloggers are following "fair use" rules when quoting AP stories.
Last week, The A.P. took an unusually strict position against quotation of its work, sending a letter to the Drudge Retort asking it to remove seven items that contained quotations from A.P. articles ranging from 39 to 79 words.
On Saturday, The A.P. retreated. Jim Kennedy, vice president and strategy director of The A.P., said in an interview that the news organization had decided that its letter to the Drudge Retort was "heavy-handed" and that The A.P. was going to rethink its policies toward bloggers.
The quick about-face came, he said, because a number of well-known bloggers started criticizing its policy, claiming it would undercut the active discussion of the news that rages on sites, big and small, across the Internet.
TechCrunch writes that its new policy is simply to ignore the Associated Press.
So here's our new policy on A.P. stories: they don't exist. We don't see them, we don't quote them, we don't link to them. They're banned until they abandon this new strategy, and I encourage others to do the same until they back down from these ridiculous attempts to stop the spread of information around the Internet.
Other bloggers are following suit and choosing not to link to the AP. Some are discussing linking to other news organizations like Reuters or other blogs instead of to the AP. A boycott AP website has been set-up here. The blog at-Largely has a good roundup of the blogosphere's overwhelmingly negative reaction to the AP's bizarre new approach to the Web.
Time will tell if the Associated Press will back off from its sudden new stance or whether they really want to be totally at odds with the way the Internet has been progressing.
Update: Now the New York Times Bits blog is calling some blogs hotheaded. They also suggest that a blogger boycott of AP stories would be ineffective.
I don't know what the A.P. will do. But neither do the bloggers calling for a boycott of the A.P. (By the way, that's a silly concept as none of these blogs actually pays the A.P. any money. If CBS News or the Huffington Post - an A.P. client - launched a boycott, that might hurt.)
We don't know yet what these AP guidelines will say but one thing should be crystal clear. If some of the top blogs on the Internet decide not to link to a certain website that website will notice. The AP's stories are not centralized but they would still feel the impact of a blogger boycott.
Posted on June 16, 2008
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Associated Press Launches Asap Website
 The Associated Press has launched a new service called Asap that includes video content and blogs. Editor & Publisher has the press release here. AP's Asap is a new website containing news, search, tabbed categories and scrolling AP headlines. There is a biweekly video feature on religion and spirituality called Everything Scared. There is also a gaming video feature called Up Down Left Right. The service also includes one blog hosted with Typepad called The Slug. The Slug is a pop culture blog. Editor & Publisher says another blog will be launching on Tuesday called Far and Wide that will contain about 25 posts a day.
"Far and Wide" is a fully interactive blog of the global AP report, handpicked by the asap staff, that customers can embed in their sites. Readers will be able respond to posts about breaking news at the AP and how it's covered. Text, audio, video and photos are elements of this innovative model, which will offer as many as 25 posts a day, with blog entries broken out by topic such as national, entertainment, lifestyles, technology and sports. In addition, mini-interviews with AP staffers in the middle of the news will offer immediate insight into the world's top events. It's breaking news, it's behind-the-scenes and it's interactive. A triple-play for online news junkies.
They may be late to the party but Asap and the videos and blogs in it are a big improvement over the AP's disastrous and weird first attempt at a blog.
Posted on April 16, 2007
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Iraq's Interior Ministry Confirms Existence of AP Source Jamil Hussein
An Iraqi police officer named Jamil Gholaiem Hussein is going to be arrested for talking to the press. Apparently, talking to the press is forbidden if
you are an Iraqi soldier -- it must be one of those new "freedoms"
now provided in Iraq.
What is significant about Jamil Hussein is that some conservative pro-Iraq War bloggers actually believed Jamil Hussein, a frequent Associated Press (AP) source, might not exist. Recent news reports (see here and here) indicate that not only does Jamil Hussein exist -- even the Iraqi government has now confirmed his existence -- but that he is going to be arrested for talking to reporters.
Some blogs that incorrectly doubted Hussein's existence include
Aces of Spades,
Flopping Aces,
Thought Mesh,
Dave in Boca, IraqSlogger, Dread Pundit, Jossle, Confederate Yankee, Media Lies, Winds of Change and Libertyblog.
Progressive Values writes that some of these bloggers were "wrong for smearing the reputation of AP over their absurd premise based solely over the mistaken translation of an Arabic name." This post on Michelle Malkin's blogs has reactions to the news that Jamil Hussein exists from several bloggers that originally doubted his existence.
Alist blogger Michelle Malkin was even planning to take a trip to Iraq
to "to investigate the Associated Press/'Jamil Hussein' story." With this latest news Malkin's "big story" may no longer need investigating.
Posted on January 4, 2007
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Associated Press and Technorati Partner
 Technorati reports that they have partnered with the Associated Press (AP) to provide blog roundup features like this on 440 AP member websites. It is similar to the Technorati features that show blogs discussing stories on Newsweek and The Washington Post.
When readers visit an AP member Web site that uses AP Hosted Custom News, they will see a module featuring the "Top Five Most Blogged About" AP articles right next to the article text, dynamically powered by Technorati. Additionally, when readers click on an AP article, Technorati will deliver "Who's Blogging About" that article. Now, if you have commentary about an AP story, you can get mentioned in that module simply by linking to that AP news URL, akin to what you can do with Washington Post articles, Newsweek articles, Der Spiegel articles, and a host of other media partners that currently work with Technorati.
It's a smart move by the AP and it's great news for bloggers because it means more traffic will be coming to blogs that discuss AP news stories. Most bloggers discuss AP stories frequently -- some as often as once a day. Many bloggers are discussing the move and see it as a very positive development. Trends in the Living Networks likes the idea.
Anyone who wants to comment on a media story can have their thoughts available to readers globally, not just on a single site, but through an entire world of syndicated media. This move is particularly important as it is not just on a single newspaper, but covering the links that hit a story at any point in the news syndication process. Technorati's initiatives - and their uptake by mainstream media - are making the system into a tightly enmeshed collaborative space for identifying and disseminating news through society.
Chrono Trono says Bloggers Rejoice, AP Loves You!. Nomadic Audio refers to the deal as Apnorati. Duncan Riley says the deal is a win-win for bloggers. More coverage at ZDNet, Blog Herald and Successful Blog.
Posted on May 24, 2006
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AP Tells Raw Story They Do Credit Blogs
The Associated Press (AP) wrote a letter to the Raw Story arguing that a plagiarism claim made by the Raw Story was false. In this same letter they also say that the AP does credit blogs and that an AP spokesman who said that the AP only credits blogs that they know was wrong.
An AP spokesman did tell Raw Story that AP does not credit blogs, but he was mistaken. AP does credit blogs when we are aware that they have broken a story first. The spokesman then called Raw Story back to correct his misstatement. Raw Story seems to have taken that correction as an admission of plagiarism, which it emphatically is not.
The Raw Story editor is still angry at the AP and it doesn't sound like the AP plans to modify their story to include a Raw Story credit. However, the Associated Press did issue a correction to a different news story to properly credit the blog TPMmuckraker.com.
Posted on April 5, 2006
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