Newspapers manage to live without it:
Prutsok: I just spoke with our news editor about
this and there’s really nothing. It was easy, he said, when there was a
three-inch hole to fill to go to AP and flow it in. It’s not much more
difficult with what we have now, just a change in habits.
Q: What’s been the reaction from your readers so far?
Prutsok: No reaction. It’s a bigger deal to us than
it is to them. Our readers couldn’t care less if we carry the same news
that they can get off the evening news.
Every paper carrying the same national/international content made a lot of sense when your local paper was the only source of national news via a wire service, but nationally televised news broadcasts began reducing our dependence on wire services long before the dreaded, evil Internet. That’s not to belittle for one moment the work being done by the AP, but if your paper won’t miss it, why run the same cookie-cutter content? For a local-local, it makes little sense to shoulder the cost.
A.