My paper's dropping the AP wire - has yours?

How long before you have a big ad about chiropractic on the same page as a "guest column" written by the chiropractor? Releases from P.R. departments are no substitute for news, no matter how high-quality their writing. The P.R. folks aren't paid better than us to ensure their stories are fair, objective, balanced and showing opposing points of view.

 

Gonna love to see that paper the day after Election 2008.

 

Less wire stories + lack of increase in manpower = more submitted photos and stories
More submitted photos and stories = less money spent, more individual readers happy (when their photo/story is used)
Less money + happier squeaky wheels = happy publisher
Happy publisher + idea = more dependence on submitted photos/stories
More dependence on submitted photos/stories = cutbacks
Cutbacks =

 

I'm curious. And I'm not trying to be smirkish or anything, but how many people really read the paper for national or state election results?

Year 2000. Our paper is being delivered and we still don't know who the president was going to be. It wasn't until I was driving home when I heard Gore was going to concede, then I was in bed when I heard that Gore was withdrawing his concession.
And how many of your editors don't know where to find the statewide election results online, through state office?
Do we really think not having wire service on election day will hurt a small paper?

 

The first paper I ever worked for didn't have AP photos when I started. They got the service soon after and I ran the first AP photo ever in the paper -- a live shot from the ’95 All-Star Game.

 

I worked for a paper that didn't have AP Photo. That was bad enough, as the 9/11 example indicates.

Not having AP Wire? Penny wise and pound stupid, for many of the reasons already cited, not the least of which being giving readers yet another excuse to avoid you.

 

Cadet,
It looks like this won't be good for you. Is there a state sports writers association where you live? If so, you could get the email addresses of writers from other papers and share sports scores from around the state. It's done in our state and it can help fill holes.
This time of year will be tough, but you'll have to get creative if you choose to stay there into next summer. You'll need to come up with series of stories during the summer to keep filling pages.
On a whole, I don't see this turning out well. Hopefully your publisher will see the mistake that has been made and resubscribe later.

 

I used to work for a really good twice-weekly that didn't have AP, but had an excellent managing editor. We had some other syndicated service that gave us enough filler to fill those awkward holes, but it was tough on plenty of days to fill up the paper when there wasn't much happening locally.

On 9/11, we ran some sort of wire story (maybe a one-time purchase or something) and then contacted a couple of local residents that lived in NYC and basically had them write first-person accounts of what the day was like for them. The paper came out Thursday and it turned out pretty well considering.

 

Are you shitting me? You're a newspaper for the love of God.
And you're not going to have election results?
For the President of the United States? The Governor? Nice public service that is.
I fucking give up.

 

Too much math! I'll go back to text-heavier posts

 

These are good questions I hope someone else can answer, because I have no experience with this. I hope this doesn't get lost in the shuffle, because I am sure it's a big reason Cadet started this thread.

 

I think it would be an enormous loss in the days before and after the election. Even if you concede that deadline issues would affect the paper anyway the day after the election (I'm all for pushing deadline back until you get the news that night), the day after that ... and the day after that ... would have huge holes.