AP ending "asap"

NEW YORK (AP) — The Associated Press is closing down a 2-year-old premium multimedia service that emphasized nontraditional methods of storytelling, saying that it had failed to gain enough traction with newspaper clients.
The service, called "asap," will be discontinued as a standalone service on Oct. 31, Kathleen Carroll, executive editor of the news cooperative, told AP staff in an internal memo Friday.

Neither of the papers I was at during that time span subscribed; the stories looked interesting, but they were also rather feature-y, and I'm not sure there was ever much space for them in most papers.

 

Maybe now they'll focus on making their core product better.

 

They sucked.

Invest on getting copy/agate out of LA and the Bay Area faster instead. No reason to wait for 30 minutes after a game as often happens, especialy since it's often the last thing anyone is waiting for.

 

Some were fun to read on down time, but I never used a single one in the paper.

 

NOW THE YOUNG READER IS LOST FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11

I'm sure they'll come up with something even lamer to replace it.

 

Maybe they'll devote more time to answer the requests of those who post on SportsJournalists.com that they haven't received their agate box from (fill in the event).

 

Have thought of this AP service recently when I look down lists of clickbait headlines and felt like asap was simply ahead of its time. Slideshows, especially, seem like something that asap embraced.

Anyone else remember asap? I was at AP during its time so I remember the fanfare and what it intended to do. It seems to me that what I see now on, say, cnn.com, is pretty much was asap was shooting for.