Via Steve Rubel, I've just heard about Susan Mernit's post about the Associated press (quietly) putting RSS feeds up on their website. I've got to say that not only am I really psyched about this, but I think it has a lot bigger of an impact than we're immediately thinking.

This comes shortly after Business Wire launched "customized" RSS feeds for their PressPass subscribers, and on the heels of Bloglines being purchased by Ask Jeeves. What does it mean? Well, it means the new distribution method has officially been named, more or less. Not that we had any doubts, but Dave Winer et al definitely get a round of whatever brew they want from me, next time they're in town.

When the Business Wire thing came about, my thought was that not only were they making their content more readily available to journalists, they were ensuring their survival for the time being. Obviously that topic didn't come up while speaking with the company, but that's what I was thinking nonetheless. Business Wire needed RSS in order to keep journalists up to speed with what their clients were saying and doing, and this was the only way to do so. Obviously the technosavvy are already all over RSS, but surely it's not too far away that the rest of the journo-population are doing similar things, right?

When I caught Jeff Jarvis' post on the subject, it furthered my already sneaking suspicions about the AP's move - it actually changes distribution of news - at least for bloggers. No longer are you "slave" to other news sources who may or may not have news feeds. You're effectively "on" the wire. While it's never going to be any story (okay, never say never), it's a significant portion of whatever stories the AP is delivering to its members. And. You. Now. Get. Them. All.

After quickly firing off an email to Jarvis, I bounced this around on IM a bit (thanks, Jason), and thought it was worthwhile to share. Here's a quick excerpt:

As those who are web savvy (bloggers excluded, for argument's sake) grow up to be journalists, they're going to know RSS as the way to go for everything - web surfing for a 15 year old right now is probably very different from what a fifteen year old in 1998 did. AP *is* the news source, and pleases not only us, the blog readers and writers (among others) with these feeds, but other news organizations as well - but they still distribute to members through their own channels - which perhaps have evolved into RSS. A wire service, which could be boiled down to information distribution for $600 or whatever, can't get the word out to same journalists, bloggers, and readers without keeping up with the Joneses - which RSS does. It's about survival for some, while "making it better" for others, as AP would be classified.

With regard to the AP, the next question is, do bloggers altogether stop referencing news sources if they're going to be pulling significant information from RSS feeds - and do the news sites that previously got traffic from bloggers - hell, from Drudge - now get hurt by the lack of eyeballs viewing their advertisements? This is momentous, in a way.

Now I in no way meant to demean Business Wire, PR Newswire, or whoever else in that space - just trying to make a quick and dirty generalization for the sake of argument. Which brings us to the final point - is this the 'killer app' move that the AP has done to actually change how news is distributed? This can be simply articulated by using bloggers as "today's" example:

Old way: News came out on the wire, and various news sites / outlets picked it up. You, the reader, went to "News Station X" on the Internet, linked to the article, wrote your comments, followup, or whatever, and that was that. "News Station X" benefited (hopefully) from the readership of anyone cruising through your blog and going to read the full story you mentioned/linked to. "News Station X" can claim yz number of readers for the month, and can sell advertising as such.

New way: News came out on the wire, and various news sites / outlets picked it up. You, the blogger, have a subscription to the feed, and your reader automatically snags any article that has to do with a topic that you cover on your blog. You click on the link through the RSS feed, are directed to the AP.org website, and go from there. Blogger Y links to the AP.org website, therefore removing "News Station X" from the equation, readership declines for "News Station X" (as much as can be argued that bloggers deliver traffic), and advertising rates do not increase over time.

Now perhaps I'm being overly simplistic, but consider mass-trafficked blogs such as an Instapundit or a website like Drudge Report. I'm sure MyWay.com or Yahoo! News is more than happy to take the 1,000,000 visitors that Drudge sent them for the article about the three headed love child of some government official. But that might not be the case forever, if this continues as it seems like it could.

Just my two cents.

[update] Rafat Ali has more on the situation and my speculation (though not so wild, really). It looks like the AP's feeds will ultimately lead readers who click on the feeds to an AP member's site "closest" to wherever they are located through geotargeting. What's not clear if you'll be able to "choose" a member site which you prefer, much like you can through their site when you are looking for a local member now. I can't say for sure I would always choose the most local paper to wherever I was - and what about while traveling abroad? Just wondering. Long-term, I still think the AP is taking a bit off the top of what its member sites are doing - people are pulling feeds from the "source," which leads to less people going to the news sites on a whim to visit, whether or not those sites have feeds in the first place. But at the least, this is positive with regard to the concerns I expressed above.