AP (Associated Press) Charges $2.50 Per Word to Quote Stories

Lately, the Associated Press (AP) has truly been going out of their way to show that traditional journalists really do understand social media.

Open-source, cross-linking, going viral? They're down with that. The AP is with it. Fo' shizzle.

For instance, the AP understands that while social media platforms such as Facebook are commonly viewed as spaces where friends and peers can connect and interact with each other, others' comments, status messages, and wall messages are not personal interactions between friends but classified information to be controlled and manipulated at all times. Hence the section in the AP social media policy that states employees are not only responsible for what they write on Facebook, but for what their Facebook friends write as well. Well done, AP, well done.

Then, the AP turned its oh-so-Web 2.0-savvy eyes towards the role of search engines in spreading media to its viewers. While search engine favourites such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing often display relevant headlines linking to their respective articles in search results, claiming as outdated an idea as "fair use", those such as AP president and chief executive, Tom Curley, have seen through it all as a ploy to steal their content. As a result, AP announced plans to implement technology that will track and report use of any kind of all published AP articles, in order to charge and sell licenses for use.

Nevermind the millions of viewers extra that reach their content through Google et. al, they can't just keep offering up someone else's headlines like that. I mean, aren't search engines publishers too?  It's not like their purpose is just to aggregate and simply point to content, or anything like that.

Finally, the AP has done it again. On Saturday, August 2, Mashable reported that the AP is planning to charge bloggers and other online publishers for quoting its content, at the extremely reasonable and business-friendly price of $2.50 per word.

However, don't think that these astute businesspeople are just plain greedy--education and non-profit groups get a discount.

In further reports of shockingly fresh business strategies by the AP, the organization is said to be discussing plans to charge for copyright each time the letters "A" and "P" appear together in a news publication.