Associated Press News & Articles

It’s fair to say that you can gauge the importance of a problem by those that attempt to solve it. The Manhattan project had Einstein. Newspapers have Google.

To be fair, we’ve been tackling this problem for some time now and many qualified technicians have tried to figure it out. But newspapers, both print and online, are too complex for any one solution.

Recently, Google’s Chief Economist, Hal Varian, weighed in on the topic during a Federal Trade commission (FTC) meeting. (FWIW: The FTC was looking for answers.)

This week, web publishing focuses on the ways digital media is making headlines. From the mobile web to new careers, digital media is at the forefront of the media business model.

This week, the web publishing roll up is letting our content hang out. Consider us the bizarro version of Associated Press, who, last we checked, was busy policing the Web and developing "a system to track content distributed online to determine if it is being legally used.” Apparently that didn't work out to well because now the AP has set out to create a news registry to protect their online content from copyright violations.

What's happening in the world of web publishing this week?

• Twitter Makes the AP Stylebook
• Scribd.com Offers eBooks
• The Chronicles of Journalism

Last summer the Associated Press had a showdown with bloggers. The AP released its own rules about how bloggers are allowed to use content written by the AP. Bloggers fought back. TechCrunch initiated a boycott.

In the end, the AP made nice and decided to draft some guidelines that they strongly encouraged bloggers to abide by. Then the housing market bubble burst. Banks began to fail. A presidential election and a failing economy took center stage.

Now, as we pick up the pieces of the last nine months, the AP wants to remind us that they are still not satisfied.

Chances are if you didn't know anything about Web publishing a few months ago, you do now. News about the industry is hard to escape, and its growing popularity will continue as long as the economy spirals downward. The last few weeks have proved productive for those interested in expanding and promoting their presence on the Web.

This week in the Web publishing industry has been a little bit of everything: from blogs to online content, from social media to online visitors.

We have also learned that 95 of the top 100 newspapers have blogs. As far as the numbers go, it was a great week to be an online publisher.

Can a newspaper exist without publishing syndicated news content?

Early this month, The Star-Ledger of Newark, New Jersey, put this question to the test with a one-day boycott of The Associated Press news. The print issue relied primarily on stories by staff members, as well as Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, McClatchy-Tribune News Service and several smaller Advance Publication papers in New Jersey.

After the one-day experiment, The Star-Ledger was back to publishing AP news. While the boycott may have been inspired by a need to prove independence from the world’s largest news-gathering source, it also may have been fueled by the rate increase the AP is implementing in January 2009.

It’s over. The AP vs. Blogger debacle has been resolved. Sort of.

After having engaged in a “constructive exchange of views this week with a number of interested parties in the blogging community about the relationship between news providers and bloggers” the AP says “resolution of this matter illustrates that the interests of bloggers can be served while still respecting the intellectual property rights of news providers.”

You know it was too good for us to just leave well enough alone. After all, who doesn’t like a good fight? So that’s why we’re following the AP vs Bloggers story closely.

Recent reports suggest that the Associated Press has scheduled a meeting for this morning with the Media Bloggers Association. In hopes of discussing appropriate guidelines for quoting AP stories, the phrase “fair use” is bound to make a few appearances, as well as lots of analytics, indicating, perhaps, the large amounts of traffic that the AP gets from humble little blogs.