News Blog

The Associated Press, a news cooperative owned by its print-newspaper contributors, said Friday that it and Microsoft have built a back-end platform that lets Web publishers syndicate online video to other sites across the Web. The upside: the video creator, Microsoft, AP, and the Web site publisher share in the revenue from video advertisements linked to the content.

The AP service, called the Online Video Network (OVN), lets members upload video to their site's player and then share it with anyone else on the network, which could include the U.S. Web sites of member newspapers, TV networks, or radio stations. With the service, publishers also have some measure of control over which sites can syndicate their video.

(Credit: Associated Press)

For example, a New York newspaper could upload video of a local fire, and set restrictions on the content that gives only publications outside the New York City metro area the rights to use the content. That way, it would have the exclusive for the New York City area (even though locals might be able to find the video on a national Web site that syndicated the material).

Robert Aitken, product manager of online video for AP, said that the service is the newest iteration of a 2-year-old project. The original platform offered a fairly basic video player that allowed local affiliates to upload either their own video (to play on their site) or content created by AP's staff. If a local newsroom posted its own material, it would collect a 50 percent cut of the advertising revenue, with the remaining share following to Microsoft and AP. But if it posted the AP's content, the publisher would get a 20 percent cut, with Microsoft and AP each receiving 40 percent. (Microsoft seems to come out well in all these equations.)

With the new system, content creators (inside and outside of a media outlet) that sign up for the network can create video to syndicate to all of AP's 1,800 affiliates, which collectively reach as many as 61 million unique visitors monthly, according to Aitken. In that scenario, a content creator that syndicates its video to a publisher would get a 30 percent cut of ad sales; the publisher, a 20 percent cut; and the remaining 50 percent would be split between the AP and Microsoft.

Contents creators are protected from digital thieves, Aitken said, because the video is contained within a video player. Other Web sites could take the video player, but it's consistently linked to an advertisement.

"In a lot of cases, something might be borrowed and the original copyright owner is not compensated," Aitken said. "But if you upload your video (in this system) you'll always be compensated."

Associated Press chief Tom Curley knows journalism. He just doesn't have any idea how to save his profession from a rendezvous with irrelevance.

Or at least it's not readily apparent to this former AP employee.

During the course of a keynote speech delivered Thursday night at the annual Knight-Bagehot dinner, Curley did acknowledge that young people "don't prefer our traditional platforms and packaging."

So far, so good. Unfortunately, I was hoping he would offer more than the usual corporate bromides. Curley included just two--that's right, two! references to the Internet. And the word "blog" failed to show up anywhere in his speech. As for any consideration how to open up the conversation with readers--fuggedaboutit.

The other 2,480 words of Curley's speech were given over to a hollow meditation about what ails the news business and possible fixes. But his halfway measures failed to impress many observers.

PaidContent's Rafat Ali said Curley's speech was "emblematic of the schizophrenic state of the news media industry: hope and despair all wrapped into a nervous bundle."

Henry Blodget over at Silicon Alley Insider was even more despairing: "Before Tom's speech, we actually thought AP (if not newspapers) was in a decent position to survive the creative destruction that is destroying old media fortunes. Apparently we were wrong."

At least Curley had the courage to acknowledge that what he termed the profession's "arrogance" has done more than any portal.

So what should be done?

I'm not sure Curley really knows. He allowed that the media must better understand and embrace the new ways in which people consume content. Truth be told, however, that's hardly news in the year 2007. With the AP and the rest of the profession struggling with how to reinvent itself in the digital era, Curley seems to believe the media's revival depends upon smarter reporting and better editing. That and figuring out technical answers to stop unauthorized scraping of news stories.

Compare that prescription with a presentation Curley gave in 2004 to the Online News Association. Actually, I thought his earlier speech offered more interesting thoughts about how to deal with an uncertain future than did last evening's stem-winder.

I'm all for smarter and better, but them what brung you to the party have long disappeared. I hope Curley and his cohorts do figure it out before time runs out. But half measures aren't going to do it and constructing a bigger, wider moat will only delay the inevitable.

This one's kind of a bitter irony. We've all been reading over and over about how traditional news outlets are turning to the Web in order to boost readership and advertising revenue in the face of a well-documented decline in print media (Wired magazine has a feature in this month's issue about newspaper chain Gannett's attempt to modernize). But in this case, it's the other way around: The Associated Press, according to a report on Friday evening, has announced that it's axing its youth-oriented, blog- and video-heavy ASAP news portal because it proved to be a failed experiment.

The two-year-old ASAP, which was created as an alternative news hub for the generation of young professionals who typically don't turn on a TV news show unless Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert is involved, will go under on October 31. Director Kathleen Carroll said in a memo that it simply wasn't profitable enough.

A look at what's on ASAP's front page. Not nearly enough on 'the news.'

(Credit: The Associated Press)

This is really too bad, in my opinion, because the AP had a great chance to show that it's possible for an established and reputable name in reporting to create a separate property geared toward the YouTube crowd. Unfortunately, it fell short in a few ways--ASAP offers up traditional AP news stories mixed with podcasts, video footage, map mashups, and blog commentary, but most of it isn't integrated as seamlessly as it could be. There's no central video player, for example.

Also, you have to do some clicking to find what you want to. Top billing is currently given to a feature on The Simpsons, a story and accompanying video about "office casual" fashion, and a link to ASAP's main news blog. Headlines, meanwhile, are kept in small print under verticals like News, Entertainment, and Sports; there's a ticker of AP stories at the top. It just isn't an adequate presentation of what's important--stratifying headlines by freshness and relevance is something that I think the Huffington Post does very well, for example.

The unappealing structure might've been behind ASAP's demise, or perhaps it was a matter of publicity: I'd never even heard of the project until I was at a party thrown by some New York-area media entrepreneurs and there happened to be an ASAP videoblogger walking around.

There's some cool content on ASAP, so enjoy it while it lasts--and stay tuned for more developments in the ongoing evolution of "next-generation news."