The Media Drop

Just received a heads up that the Associated Press would be shutting down its “asap” service in October of this year. asap targeted young audiences, specifically the 18-35 crowd, with multimedia content that is much more “in your face” than any other AP delivery. The content encompassed entertainment, sports, finance, and of course the news of the day. This is an example of how asap runs, as shown at the State Journal-Register in Springfield, llinois.

E&P covered this a short while ago, calling it a “surprise” in the headline.

After the jump, please see the memo that was sent out earlier today by executive editor Kathleen Carroll to AP staffers.

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Ladies and Gentlemen,

I want to talk with you about today’s announcement that we are ending asap as a standalone product on Oct. 31.

Since it launched 22 months ago, asap has been a wildly inventive source of stories and sounds and pictures and video unlike those found anywhere else.

It has tapped and stretched great talent around the AP. It has generated a lot of buzz and won a cool award (an EPpy for best news web site).

It is a terrific journalism success.

Economic success, however, has proved more elusive, which is why the separate service is ending. When the service ends, the asap staff will be disbanded as a standalone unit.

But we don’t want to lose what’s best about it: asap-style storytelling is vital to our future. So we are going to replant those skills into other departments in the AP.

We’ve just begun working on what that will look like and what that will mean for asap staffers. We’re looking at several departments that already have a lot of cross-pollination with asap, like Lifestyles and Entertainment. We’ll be looking at asap’s popular videos, too.

We’ll know more about all this in the coming weeks.

What’s important to know is that asap-style creativity and storytelling don’t end when the service does. The concepts, the images, the voices, the attitude, the language, the point of view … all the wonderful ways to pull readers into a story … those belong in today’s AP.

And we will find a way to make that happen.

Kathleen

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