The Medium, The Message

The Associated Press is considering withholding some of its material from members’ Web sites, instead allowing members to link to it on a central AP site, says an AP memo obtained by Neiman Journalism Lab. The idea fundamentally changes the consortium’s 150-year-old operating principle of sharing content among the membership.

The plan separates news stories into two categories: “utility” content, or stories other organizations are covering, such as a natural disaster, and “unique” content that only AP has.

“The AP would essentially be relying on its vast network of members to provide search engine optimization for its most unique content,” Zachary M. Seward says in the first of a promised series based on the memo.

He quotes Srinandan Kasi, the AP’s general counsel: “(There is) the ability now to be able to make a decision that says, this is not something we want to generically put on the wire and send to everyone to publish everywhere. We instead think this would be useful for people to use as supplemental, to enrich their storytelling. But it’s available for them [newspapers' Web sites ] to be able to point to. And the reason to do that is, then you have a bunch of links that point to a particular piece of content. You have better search outcomes. You have better exploitation of the link value, if you will, to that piece of content. So there’s an ability to think of that piece of content differently because you’re trying to maximize traffic as compared to other content where the benefit is really about getting the initial engagement.”