Hopefully Paul Newman will not charge me for the title of this post – a take-off of his famous line in Cool Hand Luke.
I was shocked to read Will Richardson’s post today. I’m glad that he does not ascribe to the new AP pricing rules for quoting – or I would owe him money:
That’s what it’s going to cost you to excerpt in your blog any content published by the Associated Press under it’s new pricing structure.
With a little more searching, I did discover a discount for educators. We would only owe $7.50 for quoting 5-25 words.
What’s next? Charging students to use quotations from AP in their research papers? Might happen if any of said research papers should end up on the web.
Come on – figure out a way to make the web and web 2.0 part of your business plan. How are you going to police the Internet? Isn’t it better to figure out how to gain from your reputation as an authoritative source? I would think that bloggers quoting and linking to your sources would create a buzz, bringing more business your way. Get creative and realize that “You’d better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone.” How much do you think I should pay Bob Dylan for using that quote?
Jacquie,
That’s a lot more money than the Associated Press used to pay me when I was a stringer (freelance reporter) for them–and I wrote entire stories!
I see the AP and other former news stalwarts trying to keep their market shares in a business that has changed dramatically.
Beth
Thanks for the comment, Beth. The internet has changed things immensely and I really thing that AP has to figure out how to operate in this new environment.