Sunday, July 06, 2008

The Associated Press wants no bloggers?

A bit of old news, but here is why I will not bother to link to an AP article in the future unless hell freezes over twice:

The A.P. took an unusually strict position against quotation of its work, sending a letter to the Drudge Retort asking it to remove seven items that contained quotations from A.P. articles ranging from 39 to 79 words.

On Saturday, The A.P. retreated. Jim Kennedy, vice president and strategy director of The A.P., said in an interview that the news organization had decided that its letter to the Drudge Retort was “heavy-handed” and that The A.P. was going to rethink its policies toward bloggers. (The full article from The New York Times here.)

Perhaps it is time to reduce/eliminate all direct quotes and links and instead just mention the date and time of the publication after a short summary. That may be the way of the future for all bloggers. It should be taken to apply to the AP now. It is no great loss, their basic reports are rarely worth quoting/linking to anyway.

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