Newspapers--now only 10% of AP revenue--have been dropping the service as the AP turns to AI and prediction markets. News is commodified. Mass media are dying.
AP says it will offer buyouts as part of pivot away from newspaper journalism https://apnews.com/article/news-industry-buyouts-ap-newspapers-dd790effc6a385514b3323560161ea4f?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=share
AP says it will offer buyouts, part of pivot from newspaper-focused history

The Associated Press says it will offer buyouts to an unspecified number of its U.S.-based journalists as part of an acceleration away from the focus on newspapers and their print journalism that sustained the company for more than 1½ centuries. The news organization is becoming more focused on visual journalism and developing new revenue sources, particularly through companies investing in artificial intelligence. That's 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. Julie Pace, AP's executive editor, says that “we’re not a newspaper company and we haven’t been for quite some time.

AP News
In Hot Type, I write about the secret news monopoly built by NY Tribune publisher Whitelaw Reid, who took control of both the AP and an early United Press until unmasked after 15 years. “Thus they exercised a type of thought control no one suspected," wrote James Smart.
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/hot-type-9798765123959/
Hot Type

Hot Type is the epic story of the magnificent 19th-century machine that rendered Gutenberg's movable type obsolete and opened the portal to the long century of…

Bloomsbury
@jeffjarvis Good point in there on the prediction market deal. The recent Times of Israel/Polymarket story shows how dependent those markets are on a reliable "oracle" (umpire) to resolve contracts and what happens when prediction markets try to free-ride. Pretty clear the oracle needs to get paid. https://blog.zgp.org/pay-the-oracle/
Pay the oracle.

@jeffjarvis Perfect for the oligarchs looking to control the very news people read and hear about, fully making news outlets into little more than regime mouthpieces repeating the talking line. Don't look up.

@jeffjarvis

welp, so much for *that* wire service.

R.I.P. Associated Press.

@jeffjarvis the really scary thing about all of this is how fast some media companies adopted AI to reduce their costs, only to then dive quickly to the bottom of relevance. It’s almost like real, meaningful, reporting is expensive and no one wants to pay for it. (Feeling sad about my Journalism degree)
@jeffjarvis
Capitalism is so depressing... but thankfully it can sell me a pill for that.

@jeffjarvis

We're at that point in the sinking of the Titanic right before it breaks in half, but after that one guy falls and hits the propeller.

Find your nearest journalistic flotation device.