AP Select

Anyone else's higher-ups chose the new AP Select over the full, more expensive package? I have to say it sucks, especially from the sports side. For those who aren't familiar, the select package consists of state wire, four national sports stories per day and some sports agate (with no tabs). And when your state AP sucks, well …

I have no idea how we're going to fill Sunday papers? I have no idea how we're going to survive the summer? I have no idea how we're going to survive period?

 

Our higher-ups threw that option out there for us. Needless to say, we told them they're crazy to do it if they want a four-page section.

 

Oh, brother. Good thing my bosses don't read this board.. I hope.

Sounds like THIS is the new slow-speed wire.

 

More like no-speed wire since nothing moves.

 

Sunday papers are good for columnists to write about golf, outdoors, longer profiles, trends and other things.

Come up with a list of ideas from each of your writers to start working on for centerpieces. Do you have a golf or outdoor writer, or a tennis writer?

If not, maybe you could get the society reporter or traffic reporter to write something. Your editor probably has some good ideas about how to fill that space if he helped decide to hack the AP service.

 

We've hacked AP on the national side but we have retained the full sports coverage ... for now. We're still on the record as planning not to renew our AP contract after 2011.

 

Yeah. I know it's doable. Just takes a little more creativity. It just sucks, especially in the midst of furloughs and every other crippling cutback our overworked and understaffed newsroom is going through.