Ted Iliff Global Consulting

AP Seeks Safe Path to Online Relevance

If you’re not familiar with the news business, you may not realize that wire services shape media agendas from local to international news everywhere every day.

That makes the Associated Press (along with British rival Reuters) arguably the most influential news organization in the world. The AP stylebook is the industry standard, and editors unsure about a breaking story will invariably ask, “What does AP say?”

Now, in the vast arena of online journalism, AP is up against new challenges that can’t be met by the traditional wire service business model.

In a memo to the staff, Michael Oreskes, senior managing editor for U.S. news, announced a new initiative to keep up with what he called “changing user behaviors online.”

He said breaking news and just-the-facts reporting are no longer good enough for the web.

“AP wins when news breaks,” he said, “but after an hour or two we’re often replaced by a piece of content from someone else who has executed something more thoughtful or more innovative.”

Oreskes could have added more provocative, more sensational, more emotional, or more irresponsible. He graciously gave a pass to all the websites that, unable to beat traditional outlets with speed and accuracy, stoop to spin and babble to snag news consumers.

The AP’s dilemma, Oreskes said, is to find ways of catering to those “users” while still maintaining the agency’s high standards. The solution is vintage AP – a careful, measured strategy called “The New Distinctiveness.”

Much of it is a common-sense plan that seems to nudge AP toward new media reality. But one element might jangle journalist nerves, even while trying to sound reassuring.

Using the label “Journalism with Voice,” Oreskes wrote: “We’re going to be pushing hard on journalism with voice, with context, with more interpretation. This does not mean that we’re sacrificing any of our deep commitment to unbiased, fair journalism. It does not mean that we’re venturing into opinion, either. It does mean that we need to be looking for ways to be more distinctive and stand out in the field.”

There’s the rub; “context” and “interpretation” can easily morph into the “opinion” that Oreskes wants to avoid. When a competent AP journalist adds what is meant to be a line or two of explanation or background, that choice alone can be a subjective decision that tilts a story out of balance. Even if the added information seems harmless to AP professionals, it may offend legions of “users” if it doesn’t validate their personal worldview. That can lead to fewer page views, fewer members (AP is a cooperative) and eventually less revenue.

AP has a history of catching up late to media trends. It’s a bit tardy again, but its intentions seem noble. The agency wants to cater to the new breed of news consumer without sacrificing its reputation and core principles.

Maybe AP will find the alchemy for separating interpretation from opinion. If not, the venerated wire service could fade to irrelevance as a stodgy anachronism, or it might join the media lemmings who follow the pack over the falls into the odious morass of bias and nonsense.