Ryan MacMillan

Oh, the agony of having vast amounts of content that every blogger on Earth wants to link to, quote, reference and purloin. The Associated Press (AP) is in a bit of a bind because, well, because it has a little too much social capital for its own liking.

The news service whose daily story output could represent the very embodiment of KUDOS would like all of you bloggers out there to, well, to back off. Which I guess, if they succeed, means that bloggers would be left chewing only on KUD. Perhaps the AP is pursuing, like American schoolchildren heeding Bert the Turtle’s advice for coping with an atomic attack, a DUK-and-cover strategy.

Anyway, the Associated Press makes a humble living selling news and feature stories to thousands of media organizations worldwide. Its influence can’t be understated. It’s the leading newswire in the U.S. by a long shot, but it’s also a serious competitor to Reuters, Dow Jones and Agence France-Presse (AFP) in the rest of the world.

Yes, life has been good to the AP. Then along came the blogosphere, whose rank and file started to copy and paste bits of AP stories into their posts.

The cease and desist letters have, inevitably, followed, and the company’s efforts to curb the miscreant Drudge Retort have created something of a stir.

Obviously, this whole affair has echoes of other attempts to keep content on the owner’s side of the wall – the New York Times’ opinion pages, for example, or the FT for significant portions of its digital lifetime.

I can see why the AP wants to keep control of its stories, and I can of course understand why it views the unbridled sharing of its content as a fundamental threat to its business. Moreover, copyright laws should be respected. But this doesn’t seem to me to be about whether the AP is acting fairly, but the extent to which it can or can’t impose its will.

Does the AP honestly think its lawyers are going to be able to get bloggers under control? And how effective will an alternative, guideline-based approach really be?

It would be interesting to ponder how the AP could instead unlock new revenue streams by more aggressively embracing and enhancing the social capital it undoubtedly possesses. I’m not talking about going to an advertising- or subscription-supported model here, but perhaps turning around to face the consumer square-on and finding other ways of unlocking the value of its news infrastructure.

I’m sure these discussions are taking place at the AP right now, and from a digital strategy perspective it would be huge fun to be a fly on the wall. Any thoughts as to what types of new business models they could look at?