AP Offers Buyouts As Part of Pivot Away From Newspaper Journalism (apnews.com)
- Reference: 0181388492
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/04/06/1730207/ap-offers-buyouts-as-part-of-pivot-away-from-newspaper-journalism
- Source link: https://apnews.com/article/news-industry-buyouts-ap-newspapers-dd790effc6a385514b3323560161ea4f
"The AP is not in trouble," said Julie Pace, executive editor and senior vice president of the AP. "We're making these changes from a position of strength but we're doing so now to recognize our changing customer base." From the report:
> The news organization is becoming more focused on visual journalism and developing new revenue sources, particularly through companies investing in artificial intelligence, to cope with the economic collapse of many legacy news outlets. Once the lion's share of AP's revenue, big newspaper companies now account for 10% of its income. "We're not a newspaper company and we haven't been for quite some time," [said Pace].
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> Despite changes -- the company has doubled the number of video journalists it employs in the United States since 2022 -- remnants of a staffing structure built largely to provide stories to newspapers and broadcasters in individual states have remained. That has its roots well back in American history; the AP was started in the mid-19th century by New York newspapers looking to share the costs of reporting outside their immediate territory.
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> The number of AP journalists who will lose jobs is murky, in part intentionally. The AP does not say how many journalists it employs, though it has a large international presence as well as its U.S. staff. Pace said the AP's goal is to reduce its global staff by less than 5%. The Marketing and Media Alliance estimated the AP had 3,700 staffers, but it was not clear when that estimate was made. Since buyouts are being offered now to only U.S. journalists, it stands to reason that the cut among that workforce will be more than 5%. Whether there are layoffs depends on how many people take the offer, Pace said.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/news-industry-buyouts-ap-newspapers-dd790effc6a385514b3323560161ea4f
AP spin (Score:1)
> "The AP is not in trouble," said Julie Pace, executive editor and senior vice president of the AP. "We're making these changes from a position of strength but we're doing so now to recognize our changing customer base."
In other words, we are toast. Sad because AP was once one of the original newspapers/sites with journalists rather than editorialists but that ship has sailed for most if not all of those outfits. It's hard keeping up with the Kardashians/Jones, whatever.
Re:AP spin (Score:4, Interesting)
>> "The AP is not in trouble," said Julie Pace, executive editor and senior vice president of the AP. "We're making these changes from a position of strength but we're doing so now to recognize our changing customer base."
> In other words, we are toast. Sad because AP was once one of the original newspapers/sites with journalists rather than editorialists but that ship has sailed for most if not all of those outfits. It's hard keeping up with the Kardashians/Jones, whatever.
Translation: A TikTok-edumucated audience, doesn't give a flying fuck about "AP" or truth anymore. Which is why AI is all the clickbait-rage.
Unfortunately that customer base is their target demographic now (by volume), in order to survive.
What replaces their journalism? More yellow? (Score:3)
I am curious what replaces top notch journalism these days. Will it "merely" be tinted/tainted views of events, or will it just be actual falsehoods and bald face lies, fresh from the LLM slop machine with ragebait, and almost zero useful, if not actionable info? Will we be seeing more creations of events in game engines to show a military victory?
Re: (Score:2)
> I am curious what replaces top notch journalism these days. Will it "merely" be tinted/tainted views of events, or will it just be actual falsehoods and bald face lies, fresh from the LLM slop machine with ragebait, and almost zero useful, if not actionable info? Will we be seeing more creations of events in game engines to show a military victory?
It entirely depends on the bloodlust of the audience clicking and generating the revenue to survive.
If we raise our kids properly they just might realize why they absolutely need to value Truth and Honesty in the future society they create. Because all of us grow tired of being fucked with by clickbait marketing. AI will only make that far worse, because gullible humans.
Imagine sitting down with someone born in this century and describing what it was like to be able to actually trust in life. At face va
Re: (Score:2)
Bullshit.
Re: (Score:2)
"Suspect" is doing a lot of heavy lifting you're demanding the other poster to perform manually.