[...] Editors of local newspapers have also found out how readers react when AP copy is stripped from their dailies — they don’t give a damn. [...]

[...] lurch along zombie-style as scaled-back copies of the original. But many will follow this pattern: A rejection of Associated Press membership, followed by a breaking up of the metro daily into several “local” papers that publish on [...]

[...] lurch along zombie-style as scaled-back copies of the original. But many will follow this pattern: A rejection of Associated Press membership, followed by a breaking up of the metro daily into several “local” papers that publish on [...]

[...] In light of that failure, the AP is looking to put into place this stop-gap measure to compensate for its shortfalls and slow the decline of its business, which many of its member newspapers have already determined they can live without. [...]

http://www.stats.com/pressrelease_030409.asp
http://www.stats.com/history.asp

“People didn’t read the Suffolk (Va.) News-Herald or the Clanton (Ala.) Advertiser for national and world news. The Norfolk and Birmingham papers were in racks every place we were and if that’s what people wanted they had access to much more of it for the same price. We considered our franchise to be 100 percent local news.”

Going beyond just the issue of using AP, this gets at the heart of what newspapers have been, currently are, and will/should become. If you’ve never really provided a particular thing, then your readership never expects it. In the case of the tiny dailies, they’ve never provided substantial world/national or even regional news, their readers don’t expect it from them, so they don’t have that obligation to do so and can drop AP entirely without much of a ripple. I suspect that if the larger, regional papers dropped their AP, readers would notice and there would be a reaction, likely negative. Such papers have traditionally played the role of the newspaper of record for their region and a provider of national news for their readers, even if it is just national news from AP. So when/if they do cut that out of their content, then it will be perceived as their offering a lesser product.

Apply that to things other than wire copy, and it’s the same concept: If you’ve never covered anything aside from local government, you won’t feel obliged to. If you’ve never covered that school 15 miles outside of town, you won’t be expected to start now. Your core readers will not miss what they never got from you.

That’s why I think it’s difficult for established, sizable papers to adopt a “we don’t have to cover everything” mentality, because that has been their identity. So if they back away from that, then they would be perceived as offering a lesser product. If I were to start a news company right now, I would do everything I can to avoid taking on that identity.

[...] NiemanJournalismLab article discusses how some newspapers are migrating away from using the Associated Press, and focuses on [...]