Associated Press

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The Associated Press
Image:Associated Press logo.png
Type Not-for-profit cooperative
Founded New York City, 1846[1]
Headquarters New York City
Key people Tom Curley, President and CEO
Area served Worldwide
Industry News media
Products Wire service
Revenue ▲ $710,346,000 USD 2007[2]
Operating income ▲ $34,216,000 USD 2007[2]
Net income ▲ $23,976,000 USD 2007[2]
Employees 4,100
Website ap.org

The Associated Press (AP) is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staffers. Many newspapers and broadcasters outside the United States are AP subscribers, paying a fee to use AP material without being contributive members of the cooperative.

As of 2005, the AP's news is published and republished by more than 1,700 newspapers, in addition to more than 5,000 television and radio broadcasters. The cooperative's photograph library consists of more than 10 million images. It operates 243 news bureaus and serves 121 countries, with a diverse international staff drawing from all over the world.

AP also operates The Associated Press Radio Network, which provides newscasts at the top and bottom of the hour for broadcast and satellite stations. AP Radio also offers news and public affairs features, feeds of news sound bites, and long form coverage of major events.

As part of their cooperative agreement with The Associated Press, most member news organizations grant automatic permission for the AP to distribute their local news reports. For example, on page two of every edition of The Washington Post, the newspaper's masthead includes the statement, "The Associated Press is entitled exclusively to use for republication of all news dispatches credited to it or not otherwise credited in this paper and all local news of spontaneous origin published herein."

The AP Stylebook has become the de facto standard for news writing in the United States.[citations needed] The AP employs the "inverted pyramid formula" for writing that enables news outlets to edit a story to fit its available publication space without losing the story's essential meaning and news information.

The decline of AP's traditional rival, United Press International, as a major American competitor in 1993 left the AP as the only nationally oriented news service based in the United States. Other English-language news services, such as Reuters and the English language service of Agence France-Presse, are based outside the United States.

Contents

[edit] History

The Associated Press Building in New York City. (The AP moved from this building in 2004.)

The Associated Press was formed in May 1846 originally as the Harbor New Association. It was organized by New York City newspapers Journal of Commerce, the New York Sun, New York Herald, the Courier and Enquirer, the Express, and the New York Tribune to share all news that arrived by telegraph.[3] A driving force in the organization's formation was Moses Yale Beach, publisher of the New York Sun, when he invited other New York publishers to join the Sun in a cooperative venture to cover the Mexican-American War.

In 1850 the Philadelphia Public Ledger and Baltimore Sun paid to receive the news without joining the consortium. In the following years more clients and a seventh New York newspaper joined the consortium. In order to keep telegraph costs to a minimum it sent the stories to regional locations which were then responsible for distributing it among themselves leading to rise of regional press groups the Western Associated Press (WAP) in the Midwest, Northwestern Associated Press, the New England Associated Press, the Philadelphia Associated Press, and the New York State Associated Press.[4]

Several press associations attempted to break the near monopoly in the 1860s and 1870s until the United Press started in 1882. In 1891 it was revealed that UPI was getting AP news for free causing a rift among the subset groups and most defected to the UPI. AP responded by striking a monopoly deal with Reuters in England, Havas in France and Wolff in Germany. Most of the papers returned to the AP.[5]

In 1898 the AP discovered that Chicago Inter Ocean was using news from a wire set up by then rival New York Sun publisher William M. Laffan. AP refused service to the Inter Ocean and the paper filed suit with the Illinois Supreme Court which ruled that the AP was similar to a public utility and could not refuse service.[6]

The Associated Press of Illinois then dissolved and set up shop under New York law in 1900 as a non-profit membership organization.

[edit] Key dates

[edit] AP Sports Polls

Main article: AP Poll

The AP is known for its Associated Press polls on numerous college sports in the United States. The AP polls ranking the top 25 NCAA Division I (Football Bowl Subdivision and Football Championship Subdivision) college football and NCAA Division I men's and women's college basketball teams are the most well known. The AP composes the polls by collecting and compiling the top-25 votes of numerous designated sports journalists. The AP poll of college football was particularly notable for many years because it helped determine the ranking of teams at the end of the regular season for the collegiate Bowl Championship Series until the AP, citing conflict of interest, asked for the poll to be removed from the bowl series. Beginning in the 2005 season, the Harris Interactive College Football Poll took the AP's place in the bowl series formula. The AP poll is the longest serving national poll in college football, having begun in 1936.

Each year on 31 March the AP announces the winner of the NCAA Men's basketball "player of the year" (POY) award.

[edit] Associated Press Television News

The APTN Building in London

In 1994, London-based Associated Press Television (APTV) was founded to provide agency news material to television broadcasters. Other existing providers of such material at the time were Reuters Television and Worldwide Television News (WTN).

In 1998, AP purchased WTN, and APTV left the Associated Press building in the Central London and merged with WTN to create Associated Press Television News (APTN) in the WTN building, now the APTN building in Camdentown.

[edit] Controversies

[edit] Christopher Newton

The Associated Press fired Washington, D.C. bureau reporter Christopher Newton in September 2002, accusing him of fabricating at least 40 people and organizations since 2000. Some of the nonexistent agencies quoted in his stories included "Education Alliance," the "Institute for Crime and Punishment in Chicago," "Voice for the Disabled," and "People for Civil Rights."[7]

[edit] Fair Use

In June of 2008 The AP sent numerous DMCA take down demands and threatened legal action against several blogs. The AP contended that the internet blogs were violating AP Hot News copyright by linking to AP material and using headlines and short summaries in those links. Many bloggers and experts[8] noted that the use of the AP news fell squarely under commonly accepted internet practices and within fair use standards. AP's response was to announce that it was defining standards regarding citations of AP news[9]. Subquently the AP announced a fee structure that limited free use and citation of AP Material to only four words[10]. AP's citation license stipulates that it “reserves the right to terminate this Agreement at any time if Publisher or its agents finds Your use of the licensed Content to be offensive and/or damaging to Publisher’s reputation[11].

[edit] Shepard Fairey

In March 2009, The Associated Press countersued artist Shepard Fairey over his famous image of Barack Obama, saying the uncredited, uncompensated use of an AP photo violated copyright laws and signaled a threat to journalism. Fairey had sued the not-for-profit news cooperative the previous month over his artwork, titled "Obama Hope" and "Obama Progress," arguing that he didn't violate copyright law because he dramatically changed the image. The artwork, based on an April 2006 picture taken for the AP by Mannie Garcia, was a popular image during the presidential campaign and now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington. According to the AP lawsuit filed in federal court in Manhattan, Fairey knowingly "misappropriated The AP's rights in that image." The suit, which also names Fairey's companies, asks the court to award AP profits made off the image and damages. "While (Fairey and the companies) have attempted to cloak their actions in the guise of politics and art, there is no doubt that they are profiting handsomely from their misappropriation," the lawsuit says. Fairey said he looked forward to "upholding the free expression rights at stake here" and disproving the AP's accusations.

[edit] Hot News

In January 2008, the Associated Press sued All Headline News (AHN) claiming that AHN infringed on its copyrights and a 'quasi-property' right to facts. The AP lawsuit alleges that competitor AHN copies the AP’s headlines and news without permission and without paying a syndication fee. After AHN moved to dismiss all but the copyright claims brought by AP, a portion of the lawsuit was dismissed.[12]

[edit] Governance

The Associated Press is governed by an elected board of directors.

[edit] Web resource

The AP's multi-topic structure has lent itself well to web portals, such as Yahoo!, MSN and so forth all have news sites which constantly need to be updated. Often, such portals will rely on AP and other news services as their first source for news coverage of breaking news items. Yahoo's "Top News" page gives the AP top visibility out of any news outlet. This has been of major impact to the AP's public image and role, as it gives new credence to the AP's continual mission of having staff for covering every area of news fully and promptly. The AP is also the news service used on the Nintendo Wii's News Channel. In 2007 Google announced it was paying for Associated Press content displayed in Google News, but the articles are not permanently archived.[14]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Associated Press (2005-01-31). 19th-century papers shed new light on origin of The Associated Press. Press release. http://www.ap.org/pages/about/whatsnew/wn_013106a.html. 
  2. ^ a b c "Consolidated Financial Statements, The Associated Press and Subsidiaries: Years ended December 31, 2007 and 2006" (PDF). Associated Press. 2008-07-28. http://www.ap.org/annual08/APFinancials_07.pdf. Retrieved on 2009-09-09. 
  3. ^ International Directory of Company Histories, Vol. 31. St. James Press, 2000 via fundinguniverse.com)]
  4. ^ International Directory of Company Histories, Vol. 31. St. James Press, 2000 via fundinguniverse.com)]
  5. ^ International Directory of Company Histories, Vol. 31. St. James Press, 2000 via fundinguniverse.com)]
  6. ^ International Directory of Company Histories, Vol. 31. St. James Press, 2000 via fundinguniverse.com)]
  7. ^ "Fib Newton". Slate.com. October 29, 2002. http://www.slate.com/?id=2073304. Retrieved on 2008-04-16. "The Associated Press accused Washington bureau reporter Christopher Newton of journalistic fraud last month and sacked him. The AP alleges that in at least 40 of the many hundred stories Newton wrote for the wire service between January 13, 2000, and September 8, 2002, Newton quoted sources who appear not to exist." 
  8. ^ [1]
  9. ^ [to http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/16/business/media/16ap.html]
  10. ^ [2]
  11. ^ [”http://license.icopyright.net/user/offer.act?gid=3&inprocess=t&sid=36&tag=3.5721?icx_id%3DD90VCFA01&urs=WEBPAGE&urt=http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/APNEWSALERT?SITE%3DAP%26SECTION%3DHOME%26TEMPLATE%3DDEFAULT%26CTIME%3D2008-05-29-11-08-34]
  12. ^ [3]
  13. ^ About Us | The Associated Press
  14. ^ "Google News Becomes A Publisher.". Information Week. August 31, 2007. http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=PBT2QGMTUGF0AQSNDLOSKH0CJUNN2JVN?articleID=201803549&_requestid=555255. Retrieved on 2008-04-26. ""Because the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, U.K. Press Association and the Canadian Press don't have a consumer Web site where they publish their content, they have not been able to benefit from the traffic that Google News drives to other publishers," Josh Cohen, business product manager for Google News, explained in a blog post. "As a result, we're hosting it on Google News."" 

[edit] External links

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