AP lock box

Nieman Lab got hold of a confidential AP memo that outlines strategies to protect online content. One of the ideas is to block both AP member and readers from putting "unique" AP content on their websites, directing them instead to a central AP hub.

From Zachary Seward at Nieman Labs:

Utility content, [AP general counsel Srinandan] Kasi told me, might be your traditional breaking-news story: “So a headline item that says, ‘Mid-air collision outside of New York and tourists die,’ let’s say. You can imagine, in the New York area, there are lots of media covering that story.” The AP would treat that content as it always has, putting it on the wire for members and customers to publish on their own sites. But other pieces of content — say, an infographic or a sidebar documenting the history of similar collisions — would be held off the wire and published only on a central AP site, Kasi said.

The plain-vanilla wire story, meanwhile, would point to the more in-depth material in the form of a link. He explained: “We have unique pieces of data, maybe, or we have a unique visual narrative, a graphic. We have unique photos, a photo gallery, and so on. How can you use some pieces of content to drive traffic to other pieces of content? That’s really what’s being addressed here.”

I should note that this has nothing to do with the AP’s print offerings, and the AP has various online feeds for customers that could see different changes.