McNewspapers and the AP

[realFedUp]

I am not an expert on how newspapers do their jobs.
Our local newspaper (McPaper owned by a conservative)
depends on the AP to supply it's national and world
news. It also apparently depends on the photos wired
to it by the AP. The morning after the wins in Iowa,
our local paper's front page had a large and animated
photo of Huckabee, wife, Norris et al. To the left was
a little mugshot of Obama. There was an editor's explanation
in a blog that the AP only sent a photo from Huckabee's
rally that night and not Obama's and there wasn't
time before going to press.

I would think that newspapers didn't have to just
depend on the AP for news and photos since we have
the Internet but campaigns should make sure that
the McPapers in this country have plenty of resources
and that their AP reporters do their jobs.

[annabanana]

1. Why would they pay to get their own stuff when they can

get the AP stuff so cheap?

[realFedUp]

7. cheap and biased?

One anonymous AP reporter gets it right and on time all the time?

[EFerrari]

2. How many pictures of Obama do you think are on the net?

A zillion?

That editor's excuse is silly on its face.

[realFedUp]

5. agree....and can't photos be taken from streaming video or tv coverage?

I was wondering if this was a bias of the conservative
owner of the McPapers or bias of AP reporters also?

[EFerrari]

8. Wel, I confess to a bias against AP myself.

But the editor definitely had other choices. A quick yahoo! search bring up 127 images for "Obama Iowa caucus".

[salin]

3. and they didn't have any AP Obama pictures on file

hard to believe.

[realFedUp]

4. I was wondering the same thing....n/t

[salin]

6. I get why they wouldn't use internet photos (copyright concerns)

though I would think that the campaign would promote the use of images from their website.

How are the house issues working out?

[EFerrari]

9. What do you think the chances are that the Obama campaign

didn't mail photographs out? Or, that I couldn't make a call to the campaign to get permission to use something at their site? I'd say, slim to none.

[salin]

11. My point (per the latter) exactly.

I would guess this is a case of editorialism working beyond the editorials - see it would take too much work to do that (make a call per a photo) so lets just run this little grainy one...

[ThomWV]

10. Its not just a one-way-street

First off its a subscription service that papers can draw from, they are not obliged to use everything AP spews out. There are other news services too, and as far as I know if a paper wanted to it could subscribe to several and draw from all of them at various times for both story coverage and photos. There are also stock photos that papers draw from all the time. Also, I believe that most subscirbers are also contributors at times, so in that sense AP is like a cooperative in which all subscribers have the ability to toss a story into the pipeline. That is why they have almost instant coverage no matter where in the country news might be in the making, that comes from the locals and then in addition a large staff of overseas reporters supplied by AP itself. It is certainly a sensible option to use such services for small papers. Where else would something like the Preston County Weekly Standard ever give us news of the West Bank?