A sad day for more than 120 #AssociatedPress employees as the organization announced that it is having to close down its newspaper-focused business, which represents only 10% of its revenue and is shrinking. More buyouts are expected.

The general public does not seem to value information quality, and at this point only governments will be able to sustain quality #journalism. https://apnews.com/article/news-industry-buyouts-ap-newspapers-dd790effc6a385514b3323560161ea4f

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

@mattsheffield

Do you know, with the track record of governments around the world, I'm not entirely sure that they can sustain the quality of facts for us all.

@ColinHaynes What's your alternative, I'm curious.
@mattsheffield @ColinHaynes for most people it’s “grok is this real” *requests community note*

@Cravo @mattsheffield

Agreed. And therefore it depends on which community they ask what answer they get.

It's true (to me) to say that people are entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts. That seems to have slipped away.

I remember when the internet started and how it was full of hope that the sum total of human knowledge would be available to all, and that different peoples and cultures would be able to talk in a way that was never possible before.

We wasted that. I'm sad.