THE AP: IT STILL MAKES GOOD DOLLARS AND SENSE

150 years young, news cooperative takes flak, keeps on delivering

The Associated Press has always been about saving money.

Whether it was to reduce the number of reporters in boats rowing out to meet ships from Europe in the 19th century or an attempt to leverage the development costs of digital cameras by selling them to member newspapers, the AP's raison d'etre has always been to cut costs.

Today, virtually every daily newspaper in the United States is a member of the AP. A big influence on broadcasters as well, the cooperative provides 24-hour news to 55 radio stations, and more than 750 other stations subscribe to its broadcast network.

It is ubiquitous on the news landscape. The AP is everywhere.

In this, its 150th year and the week before its annual meeting (to be held, as always in modern times, in conjunction with the Newspaper Association of America's annual membership meeting, which will be in Dallas), I asked Correspondent Julius Duscha to take a hard look at the wire service.

Though my personal concerns about the news cooperative's forays into technology marketing are well known – in the early days of the decade I was part of a small cabal of concerned industry executives who denounced the AP Leaf Picture Desk – I come away from reading Duscha's report more encouraged than discouraged.

I think that any worries an editor or publisher might have about the AP become less bothersome when the equation of money is taken into account. If every time you say, "Why did the AP do that?" you remember that its primary goal is not to be first, fast and accurate, but to save members money, then you'll know why the cooperative embarked on whatever path it is that concerns you.

There is no question in my mind that Louis Boccardi, the president and general manager, has worked closely with the members of the wire service's board of directors – virtually all of them newspaper publishers – to get them exactly what they want: the most comprehensive worldwide news gathering organization that costs them the least amount of money.

While we technocrats were whining about the inferior qualities of the AP Leaf Picture Desk (it was proprietary, we sulked), the implementation of those systems saved the wire service millions of dollars annually by eliminating the expensive land-line network for analog picture transmission and replacing it with an almost cost-free satellite transmission system.

The organization cut its operating costs by making capital investments. Though some could debate the methodologies the wire service used to achieve the goal (and we did), the goal was achieved: Money was saved.

Every top newspaper executive has to weigh the benefits of a great news report against the costs of a great news report. Most publishers fall into the category of wanting a good news report but being willing to pay a little less than a good news report costs. With a budget of $500 million a year, the AP gets a much better report than it pays for – the product of high-quality reporters and editors who find the romance of working for the world's largest wire service more alluring than the paycheck.

But the way the AP has kept the assessments to member newspapers down has been to branch out into ancillary activities – building picture desks and digital cameras; transmitting display advertising; selling equipment; creating new text, audio and video services – and apply the profits from those new activities against the bottom line.

There is a case to be made that without the AP Leaf Desk, the agency would have priced itself out of the newspaper marketplace.

Though many of us in the newspaper business can complain about some specifics of execution in the AP's actions, the point of the matter is that newspaper publishers in general are getting more than their money's worth out of their AP assessment.

Isn't that what it's all about?

– David M. Cole

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• The Associated Press: It's not your father's wire service
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• Roger Mudd, on the shape of the news
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• Persons

From NEWSINC., April 13, 1998, Copyright © 1998, The Cole Group. All Rights Reserved.