Who is Killing Local News? The Associated Press Is

Who is Killing Local News? The Associated Press Is

 

Recently, there were two prime local examples of how the Associated Press is helping lead to the demise of high-quality local journalism.

The reality is that newspapers, as we know them in most communities, are just a shadow of their former selves. Media critics and business analysts have tracked their demise to a range of issues - giving away their content for free via the web and undermining the value of their journalism, their failure to protect their classifieds by creating their own digital products and sustaining that revenue, and the lack of innovation, to name a few.

GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST

While all of these factors may have started the decline, the accelerant to their demise is the Associated Press. More and more of each local newspaper is exactly the same as the newspaper across the country — outdated, already-reported news being cobbled together by the Associated Press. 

Make no mistake about it - the AP is big business, a consortium owned by the very newspaper industry it serves. According to AP’s own financials, it generated more than $600 million in revenue in 2014. AP is a not-for-profit, but there is nothing charitable about it.

Two recent examples of the AP’s dumbing down of America and killing local journalism

The first example occurred on December 23, 2015. Just after the Boston Globe unveiled the charges about sexual abuse at St. George’s School, a top American prep school located in Rhode Island, the Providence Journal ran an Associated Press story. What is emerging to be a national scandal did not generate even a minute of a reporter's time at the legacy paper in the state, who did not or could not assign a reporter when the story ran. The same AP story that borrowed the journalism of the Boston Globe was printed in Providence and probably Biloxi. 

The availability of the coverage, as mediocre as it is, creates a commoditization. The Associated Press stories, at best, regurgitate someone else’s journalism.

Moreover, the AP, maybe due to lack of quality reporters, has repeatedly just lifted other media companies' work. 

 

The second example took place this week on Tuesday. GoLocal’s Kate Nagle exclusively broke the story of College Hill neighbors concerned about a metal carport in the middle of one of America’s most historically preserved neighborhoods - that GoLocal was first to uncover belongs to New England Patriot Danny Amendola. 

The next day, Associated Press reporter Michelle Smith wrote a very similar story with no attribution to GoLocal’s original journalism. This was not the first time she had lifted a GoLocal story. In 2014, she lifted a GoLocal investigation into plagiarism by candidate Jorge Elorza's campaign of a letter of apology. AP corrected that story after repeated requests and legal threats by GoLocal.

 

 

Read below:

An exclusive report published Thursday evening by the investigative team of GoLocalProv.com about a Providence Democratic Mayoral candidate plagiarizing a letter from another politician in Rhode Island was rewritten and distributed by the Associated Press without attribution.

“It is amazing that the Associated Press de facto plagiarized our investigative team's work on unveiling a mayoral candidate's plagiarism,” said Josh Fenton, CEO and Co-Founder of GoLocal24, the parent company of GoLocalProv.com.

Other leading news organizations - WPRI-12 and RINPR, the public radio affiliate in Providence, RI, - both sourced GoLocal’s investigative reporting by Stephen Beale and Kate Nagle.

The Providence Journal and other news outlets that subscribe to Associated Press ran the story as original reporting by Associated Press. There was no byline on the Associated Press story.

“Our team worked virtually around the clock to break this story on a mayor candidate’s plagiarism – the ultimate irony is that the Associated Press lifted a story about plagiarism," added Rick Daniels, COO of GoLocal24. Daniels previously served as President of the Boston Globe and ran Gatehouse Media’s New England operations. “In this era of speed and digital reporting, there is no excuse for this type of action by the AP.”

The Associated Press’ Mike Meila, of the New England Office of the Associated Press located in Boston, initially refused to address the issue of the error.  Later, he told GoLocal that a change was made, but refused to share the rewrite.

“I am sorry legacy media has its financial challenges, but there is no excuse for this type of behavior and unwillingness to correct it in a timely fashion and own it. God knows we make mistakes, but correct them and apologize,” said Fenton.

In both cases, legacy media by-passing reporting and depending on the AP filler, and the case of the "free riding" of the original journalism, both undermine the production of local news in each community.