Connecting - March 20, 2024

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Connecting

March 20, 2024

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Colleagues,

Good Wednesday morning on this March 20, 2024,

It was a one-two punch to the gut for The Associated Press – the news Tuesday that Gannett and McClatchy, the two largest newspaper chains in the country, plan to cut back their AP services drastically by the end of this month.

Our colleague Mark Mittelstadt used the boxing analogy in a perspective he shares in today’s Connecting.

Contract negotiations with both groups had been ongoing for some time, but the announcement of their decisions Tuesday came as a surprise. When the Gannett memo to staff was made public, AP's Lauren Easton, vice president for corporate communications, said, "We are shocked and disappointed to see the memo." The McClatchy announcement came later in the day.

CNN Reliable Sources wrote: “The Disassociated Press: The two largest newspaper chains in the country are dramatically scaling back their relationship with the Associated Press, a pair of seismic moves that will impact how millions of people across the U.S. receive their news."

How bad will it be, if the two chains indeed plan to follow through with their announcements beyond the end of their current contracts - Gannett's to expire at the end of 2024, McClatchy's in early 2025?

Revenue from U.S. newspapers is roughly 10 percent of the AP’s income, and Easton told The New York Times, “The loss of McClatchy and Gannett would not have a material impact on our overall revenue.”

In a statement, she said, “We are disappointed in this news from Gannett and McClatchy, as conversations with both news organizations have been productive and are ongoing. We remain hopeful Gannett and McClatchy will continue to support the AP beyond the end of their membership terms.

“We appreciate that these are difficult decisions to make and deeply understand the challenges the news industry faces. At the same time, this would be a disservice to news consumers across the U.S. who would no longer see fact-based journalism from the AP."

IT'S NOT PERSONAL, IT'S STRICTLY BUSINESS: Well, I guess that line from the Godfather applies here, but the news hits home and is indeed personal for Ye Olde Connecting Editor, a self-admitted Luddite who gets home delivery of The Kansas City Star (McClatchy) and USA Today (Gannett). I enjoy both newspapers. If they do officially part the AP that I love and believe in, I'll need to make a decision. In all the places we've lived over the years, I've never had a hometown newspaper that wasn't an AP member. Lots of negotiation remains. I'm hopeful both groups will stay and that their products will continue to be thrown onto my driveway.

Our colleague Mike Hendricks' story in Tuesday's issue on the closing of the Albany bureau offices resulted in some interesting responses. We bring them to you in today's issue.

JIM WILLIS OBITUARY: Click here for the obituary of our colleague Jim Willis, former AP Jefferson City correspondent, shared by his wife Debbie. Jim died March 11 at the age of 78.

Have a great day – be safe, stay healthy, live it to your fullest!

Paul

Gannett, McClatchy news chains say they will stop using Associated Press content

By DAVID BAUDER

NEW YORK (AP) — The Gannett and McClatchy news chains, publishers of more than 230 outlets including USA Today and the Miami Herald, have said they will stop using journalism from The Associated Press amid continued financial pressures for the news industry.

The decision by Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper chain, severs a century-old partnership. It “enables us to invest further in our newsrooms,” Gannett spokeswoman Lark-Marie Anton said on Tuesday.

A memo from Gannett’s chief content officer Kristin Roberts directed the chain’s editors to stop using stories, videos and images provided by AP on March 25. The memo, obtained by The Associated Press, was first reported by The New York Times.

Shortly after, AP said it had been informed by McClatchy that it would also drop the service. A McClatchy spokesperson did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

Like most newspaper companies, Gannett and McClatchy have been struggling financially for several years. Gannett’s workforce shrank 47% between 2020 and 2023 because of layoffs and attrition, according to the NewsGuild. The company also hasn’t earned a full-year profit since 2018, according to data provided by FactSet. Since then, it has lost $1.03 billion. The hedge fund Chatham Asset Management took control of the formerly family-owned McClatchy, with outlets in 30 U.S. markets, in a bankruptcy auction in 2020.

The AP was disappointed, considering there had been productive discussions with both news organizations, spokeswoman Lauren Easton said. The news cooperative remains hopeful that both chains would continue to support AP beyond their current contracts, she said.

“We appreciate that these are difficult decisions to make and deeply understand the challenges the news industry faces,” Easton said. “At the same time, this would be a disservice to news consumers across the U.S. who would no longer see fact-based journalism from the AP.”

Those involved would not specifically discuss how much money the news chains would save by this move, although it is likely to be in the millions of dollars.

In an earlier era, when fees from U.S. newspapers provided AP with virtually all of its revenue, such decisions would have represented a financial earthquake for the news cooperative. But AP has diversified its services with the decline of newspapers and U.S. newspaper fees now constitute just over 10% of its annual income.

With reporters in all 50 states and nearly 100 countries, The Associated Press provides news through text, still photography, audio and video for news organizations that can’t afford such reportorial reach on their own. The company says that AP’s journalism is seen by over half the world’s population every day.

The AP won two Pulitzer Prizes last year for its coverage of the Ukraine war. Partnering with PBS’ “Frontline,” AP last week won its first Academy Award, with the film “20 Days in Mariupol” honored as best documentary feature.

AP’s diversification efforts include offering its journalism directly to consumers through an advertising-supported website. The company also provides production services and software to newsrooms across the world. This week, AP launched an e-commerce site called AP Buyline, run by the company Taboola, that provides product content and reviews for consumers.

Gannett said it would continue paying for two of AP’s most visible services: its extensive election-related polling and vote-counting, and the AP Stylebook that sets guidelines for journalism practices and word usage. It said it has signed an agreement with Reuters to provide news from around the world in multiple formats, including video.

“Key to this initiative is ensuring that we extend the reach of the work we do to more readers, viewers and listeners nationwide,” Roberts said in her memo.

With a contract for AP’s content that lasts to the end of 2024, it was not clear why Gannett is choosing to cut things off next week. While there remains the possibility that it represents a negotiating tactic for AP to lower its fees, Anton said she was not aware of any contract negotiations.

McClatchy’s latest contract with AP was due to expire early next year, Easton said.

Click here for link to this story.

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From The New York Times:

McClatchy, which the hedge fund Chatham Asset Management bought out of bankruptcy in 2020, told its editors this week that it would stop using some A.P. services next month. McClatchy operates about 30 newspapers, including The Miami Herald and The Kansas City Star, as well as a bureau in Washington, D.C.

In an email sent on Monday, Kathy Vetter, McClatchy’s senior vice president of news and audience, said that The A.P.’s feed would end on March 29 and that no A.P. content could be published after March 31. She said, however, that McClatchy would continue to use The A.P.’s election results data.

“With this decision, we will no longer pay millions for content that serves less than 1 percent of our readers,” Ms. Vetter wrote in the email, which was viewed by The New York Times. “In most cases we have found replacements. However, we are still working on a universal solution for state ‘wires’ content.”

Take a deep breath and move forward

Mark Mittelstadt - The news Tuesday that Gannett and then McClatchy were cutting back use of Associated Press services by the end of this month no doubt felt like a one-two punch to the gut for AP executives, employees and retirees.

The loss of revenue from the two major American newspaper chains could substantially impact the news cooperative's bottom line and potentially affect its services and employment. The loss of content sharing from those newspapers could be a double whammy.

As AP executives and retirees contemplate the potential losses, my encouragement is to take a deep breath, look forward and overcome this challenge.

We've been here before.

Every so often during my nearly three decades with AP, a publisher, top editor or newspaper chain executive would decide they didn't need AP. We can get what we need from other sources, potentially at a huge cost savings, they would reason. They would enter notices of cancellation and even stop using AP products.

It almost always never worked. By the end of the cancellation period, the newspaper or the group would decide that what they were getting was substandard or didn't fit their needs. They would lift the notice or they would renew their membership and services. We all would move forward.

It was not just news. Tribune Media Stocks, anyone?

Early in my tenure as a bureau chief (circa 1989) I was called to AP headquarters to fill in for an executive in what was then Newspaper Membership. A major news company had informed us it intended to cancel news services and would not be using AP content. My principal project was to review the company's content and to identify phrases, paragraphs, even full stories from AP that it had used without credit. In several instances the AP content was barely below the lead paragraph of a story carrying that company's journalist's byline or credit from another news service.

It was pretty clear the company was using a substantial amount of AP content without credit and possibly without paying for it. Membership executive Jim Lagier took my findings, presented it to the corporate executive who had decided they could do without AP and got the cancellation lifted.

That's not to minimize the current predicament. No one likes to lose major, paying customers, or members. A substantial case can be made to Gannett, I believe, that it already has reduced staff in so many locations to such levels that it needs MORE fact-based content from AP not LESS.

I pray that Daisy Veerasingham, her team and all of AP's workforce have the strength, courage, patience and wisdom to meet this challenge head on, for the benefit of the company, the many people who rely on it, and news consumers across America and around the globe.

The world needs AP journalism.

Remembering Jim Willis

Ellen Miller - I worked with Willis in the Bismarck bureau during the 1977 legislative session that became known for the Fun Time bus that created a statewide furor. When the Carter administration announced it would kill several western water projects, including the Garrison Diversion in North Dakota, the Legislature decided to travel as a group to make a show of force at a federal hearing in Jamestown. It took four busloads to take everybody and one of them brought along fixings for Bloody Marys and screwdrivers. On the way home, the bus stopped at every bar between Jamestown and Bismarck. Alas for Willis, he was on a dry bus. The newspaper reporter on the boozy bus, and my memory can’t pull her name or paper, spilled the beans and alerted Willis, who immediately put the story on the wire, dictating to me in the Bismarck bureau where I had been assigned to hold the fort. Within a few hours, the state switchboards were jammed by calls from outraged voters. The general desk called about a budget line and story for Sunday on the AAA wire. Willis tapped every source he had to answer members’ demands for the list of legislators who rode on the Fun Time bus. I’ll never forget collaborating with Willis on the lede for the Sunday AAA story: “North Dakota wheat farmers don’t drink Bloody Marys and screwdrivers on their way to work in the morning, and don’t think their legislators should, either.’’

Rest in peace, my friend.

Closing of the AP’s Albany bureau

Peter Eisner - One of my earliest AP memories was before I was hired -- as a reporter at the Hudson Register-Star and Poughkeepsie Journal in 1973-1974, I was able to supplement my meager income by fielding obits to Charlie Hanley when he was AP Albany News Editor -- $2 each -- and Sunday features -- $3. Charlie and I later became friends and colleagues on the foreign desk in New York. I joked to him that he was behind in my payments and owed me something like $8. Hey, with inflation, Charlie, it sounds like real money by now!

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Joe Galu - Sad to read about the demise of the Albany bureau. We took good care of our member papers and broadcast stations. They will feel the loss as much as anybody.

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Bill Hendrick - Interesting. My first AP bureau was in Birmingham, Ala., in a corridor that connected two large newspapers, the Post-Herald and the BM News. Both had large staffs. Neither exists now. If you went to one of the papers and walked thru a corridor to get to the other, you'd see the AP office, which had four employees. The Louisville bureau was in the Courier-Journal building and big enough to have a chief technician named Jenx (don't remember his title or name). In the Atlanta bureau, we had probably a dozen operators and a computer named 'Pete' that was probably 30 yards long, floor to ceiling, in its own air-conditioned room. In BM and LX, strangers from the street would wander in and ask for tours and explanations of the dozen or more clacking teletype machines, including two message wires, one regional, one national. And now I think the Courier Journal is on life support, the LX Times is defunct, and the BM newspapers are as dead as 4 o'clock. So damned sad.

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Mike Holmes - I understand the economics, but I'm sorry to see the AP closing its physical bureaus. Having an office once allowed me to beat a speeding ticket.

When I joined up in 1977, the AP bureau was in a tiny, windowless room on the 5th floor 0f the Des Moines Register & Tribune building. We were working out of that office when I got a 4 a.m. phone call from Iowa news editor Don Beman. "Get to the office right away," he told a groggy me. "The building's on fire. Call your story to Omaha; they're filing the wire for us."

As I sped toward downtown, I envisioned a towering inferno. Then I saw the flashing lights of a police cruiser in my rear-view mirror. "Where's the fire?" the officer asked (honestly!). "In my office," I replied, explaining that I worked in the R&T building. He said he'd heard that call on his radio and let me go — with a stern warning to stop speeding.

Turns out, the blaze was minor. A light bulb had burst in the press room, setting some newsprint on fire. The damage was minimal, and the presses rolled on time for that afternoon's edition of the Tribune.

The Des Moines bureau later relocated to a modern downtown bank building where we got much more space, nice new furniture and lots of windows. But no excuse for speeding.

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Bill Morrissey - THIS IS A FICTIONAL REPORT TO MAKE A POINT

ALBANY (XX) — RIP!

The Associated Press, the oldest news agency in the United States, has, after 178 years, shut down news editing functions in Albany, New York, the capital city of the state. Three reporters remain, two on legislative and government assignments, and one on general assignment.

The collegiality of AP reporters in the New York cities of Buffalo, Syracuse and Albany and associate reporters, known as stringers, in Rochester, Ithaca, Utica, Corning, Niagara Falls, and many other cities in the state is replaced by reporters working by themselves.

Similar executive decisions have been made by The AP in many of the 50 states of the United States.

Lauren Easton, AP’s vice president and director of media relations, said “AP continues to evaluate its global real estate footprint to better align our physical space with how we work today in a hybrid environment.”

A Personal view:

It’s been 57 years since a telephone call (landline), from Albany, offered me, my wife and our young daughter (later two), an opportunity to move from Poughkeepsie, NY, to Buffalo, NY, and to change my job from reading on the radio AP broadcast copy to that of reporting, writing, and editing AP stories for the readers of newspapers and the viewers and listeners of broadcast news.

It was a great career choice for the Morrissey clan that has been together for more than 61 years.

We served (worked) in Buffalo and Syracuse, NY, Montpelier, VT, Nashville, TN and at New York General Desk.

We also served at the Wire Service Guild and then at UPI during UPI’s bankruptcy.

Throughout, in my mind, there were two key elements to success: competition that kept us awake and collegiality which kept each of us honest and on target.

The strength of The AP report was the cooperation between colleagues, reporters and editors, who shared responsibility for “the wire.”

Closing an office shakes memories, but not much else.

But, if closing offices makes the AP a distributor of reports not subjected to the sharp eyes of seasoned colleagues, I think it will lead the report to the level of the ocean of cannon fodder that surrounds us.

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George Walsh - From Mike Hendricks' ALB ode to news Gannett is dropping The AP and closing the Quincy (Mass.) Patriot Ledger office, Tuesday was a lot. My first paying gig as a reporter was at the family-owned Patriot Ledger while in grad school in 1977. My first staff job was covering education at a long-gone Gannett paper in New Rochelle, N.Y. My final job was as the last 'boss' in the ALB bureau. That administrative correspondent position was eliminated in 2016. When I joined AP Albany in 2006, we had 24 people between there and Buffalo. When I left there were eight. Both of the stalwart family-owned NY papers where I'd spent the middle of my career, along with the Buffalo News, had dropped out as members. I don't need to dwell on everything the public good and democracy has lost. But here's one reminder. In the late '90s ALB bureau chief Lew Wheaton led a consortium of the state's newspapers on a mission to digitize state campaign finance records. New York government didn't make the data accessible and searchable. So a consultant paid through the consortium did the work. Papers kicked in money pro-rated by circulation and we all got the database to mine for stories of local or state interest. I did the digging at the Schenectady paper and remain proud of what we collectively reported. Lew, who I first met during member visits, worked without fanfare to help build a remarkable collaboration. The AP and members at their best.

New-member profile: Chuck Wolfe

Chuck Wolfe - I had 28 very memorable and fulfilling years with the AP, beginning in the spring of 1976 in the Charlotte bureau and concluding in the summer of 2004 in the Capitol bureau at Frankfort. In between were stints in Raleigh and Lexington, both with heavy sports responsibilities.

But my first AP job was as the summer relief staffer in CN — Charleston, West Virginia — in 1975. It was the most fun I ever had at AP. West Virginia in 1975 was an absolute gusher of news. Formidable staff, led by news editor Roger Petterson, later of NY GEN. We were on the aaa all the time. Mostly night broadcast, as one would expect, but also had assignments tossed my way that got me hooked on wire service work. One night, NY GEN topped the PMs digest with a story I’d written about a United Mine Workers strike, and for which I also filed audio reports for AP Radio. Heady stuff for the relief staffer!

Changed careers in 2004, going into state government public affairs. Spent a while as speech writer for then-Gov. Ernie Fletcher but most of my 15 years in state government was as public affairs director for the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet.

Personal: Army, March ‘68 to Nov ‘71. B.A., University of Kentucky 1975. Married to wife Susan since 1977. Sons Zachary and Thomas. Three grandkids: Harvey, 7; Lenora, 3, and Liam 2.

Random remembrance: When appointed Lexington correspondent in 1977, drafted my stories on an Adler manual typewriter, pencil edited, then punched onto paper tape that a huge machine transmitted as copy to the Louisville bureau for final editing and then on to an operator in Columbus. Later given a Hendrix CRT that had been discarded in CN. Prone to overheating and susceptible to static electricity. Greatest tech day of my life was the day Frankfort got Nokia PCs. What work horses! Impervious to static.

Academy To Restore ‘20 Days In Mariupol’s Win To Shortened Version Of Oscar Show Sent To Global Broadcasters After Ukraine Outrage Over Omission

By Matthew Carey

Deadline

EXCLUSIVE: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences plans to recut the 90-minute version of the Oscars broadcast it provided to international licensees, Deadline has learned, in order to restore a key moment it had left out of the original package: the Best Documentary Feature category won by the Ukraine war-themed film 20 Days in Mariupol.

Deadline has learned the move comes after Suspilne TV, the broadcaster that holds rights to air the Oscar show in Ukraine, protested the omission of the category from the 90-minute version, saying it was “shocked and deeply disappointed” by the decision that also left the moving acceptance speech by Ukrainian filmmaker Mstyslav Chernov on the cutting-room floor.

In that speech, Chernov mourned the devastating loss of civilian life that has resulted from Russia’s invasion and urged the film community to ensure “the history record is set straight, and that the truth will prevail and that the people of Mariupol and those who have given their lives will never be forgotten.”