Abandoning the AP

I was reading an article on Ad Age about Media companies cutting back in order to make it through the tough times ahead. They are projecting the slow times to continue into 2009 and therefore are taking action now. The article focuses on media outlets such as Viacom and NBC Universal and not as much on news outlets, but it did have this quote:

"Newspapers have been slashing costs almost frantically for some time now, for reasons more to do with the demise of their local monopolies and the decline of their core product. Now, however, some newspapers are dropping their membership in the Associated Press to eliminate the associated costs. That idea gained real momentum last Thursday, when Sam Zell's Tribune Co., publisher of papers including the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, said it is abandoning the AP."

We've talked a lot in class about local reporters being taken off local stories in favor of national ones. What happens when you cut out the national news source. Is it more cost effective to send someone to the news when it is out of state then to use the AP? On the flip side, we've talked about newspapers like the Star Tribune that have become too reliant on the AP. I don't know if there is a winning side to this, but in my opinion (as someone who works with and for the media companies and not the news organizations) it doesn't seem right to cut off a major news source to save money.