The New Associated Press for the 21st Century

by Scott Karp · May 24th, 2010 · 120 Comments

Today, at TechCrunch Disrupt, we’re announcing the launch of Publish2 News Exchange, a platform aimed at disrupting the Associated Press monopoly over content distribution to newspapers. With Publish2 News Exchange, newspapers can replace the AP’s obsolete cooperative with direct content sharing and replace the AP’s commodity content with both free, high-quality content from the Web and content from any paid source.

With Publish2 News Exchange, we’ve created what the AP should have become, but can’t because of a classic Innovator’s Dilemma. The New AP is an open, efficient, scalable news distribution platform. We’re enabling newspapers to benefit for the first time from the disruptive power of the Web, and from the efficiency of content production on the Web.

Publish2 News Exchange solves the problems that have prevented newspapers from creating an efficient, scalable alternative to the AP. We bridge the gap between print publishing and Web publishing by connecting natively to outdated newspaper print publishing systems. We support the standard formats used by the AP and the technologies that newspapers already use to move content between print and Web systems. Our self-serve permissioning system enables newspapers and other publishers to distribute content to whomever they choose on whatever terms they choose.

With every revolution in production, there is a corresponding revolution in distribution. We’ve had the revolution of the blogosphere’s content production, and the corresponding revolution with search. Recently, we’ve had the revolution of demand-driven content production, e.g. Demand Media, Associated Content, Aol’s Seed, aimed at maximizing the efficient production of high quality content.

Publish2 News Exchange enables the next revolution in content distribution.

We’re enabling newspapers to barter the value of their trusted brands and their print products, which still reach millions of news consumers, to distribute high quality Web content in place of the AP. In exchange, publishers of high quality on the Web can build their brands in print, as the New AP. The result is a new efficient supply and distribution chain for high quality content brands.

And high quality content brands are the key to premium brand advertising.

Here are some of the content brands that have created newswires for our launch:

It’s counterintuitive for a Web platform to be supporting print publishing. But the reality is that print publishing still drives newspaper operations, including Web publishing. To disrupt the AP now, we have to support print. While print lasts, we want to make it more like the Web: more dynamic, a richer, better product. We want to make curating high quality content for print as easy as linking on the Web.

Our ultimate goal is to create a bridge for newspapers’ trusted brands into a digital future, positioning Publish2 News Exchange at the center of the news industry as it evolves.

Read more about the launch of Publish2 News Exchange.

Categories: Announcements

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