Tribune papers dropping AP?

According to this:

http://timeoutchicago.com/arts-culture/chicago-media-blog/15958831/wire-cutters-tribune-co-newspapers-dropping-ap

Affects Chicago, Baltimore, Orlando, Hartford, Ft. Lauderdale, Newport news. LA staying as is.

Was this expected?

 

Total shocker. It will be very interesting to see what places such as Newport News, Hartford and Ft. Lauderdale do with out AP.

 

Tribune has been building toward this for a couple of years, as the story notes. The non-LAT sports sections have been largely without AP for some time. The desk in Chicago provides most of the roundups by compiling Reuters, The Sports Xchange and a few other services, along with staff rewrites.

 

It only makes sense, as what will you be missing from AP that the others can't provide? The AP male athlete of the year stories and crap like that? I honestly don't know, but when was the last time that AP broke a huge story ahead of other news agencies? And again I don't know, but when Ryan Freel committed suicide the other night, was AP out in front and on top of the story right away on a Saturday night, or did they respond hours later?

 

Reasonably old news. Agate is the only reason this wasn't completely done two years before.

As has been said before, there hasn't been an AP story or photo in the smaller Trib papers in a couple of years. They did have access to AP agate, however.

 

The Tribune newspapers even stopped using AP agate one year ago.