02/26/2010

AP Press Release

Associated Press announces unit to enable new products and services from news industry content

AP Gateway to develop business opportunities for AP and news publishers

DENVER – The Associated Press announced today that it will create a strategic business unit to seek and develop new business opportunities for its multimedia news and that of its members and other news providers. Called AP Gateway, the unit will facilitate development of fresh news consumer experiences for the Web as well as mobile phones, tablets and e-readers.

“AP Gateway will serve as the launching pad for new products and services from AP and other interested news publishers,” Tom Curley, president and CEO of The Associated Press, said today at the annual meeting of the Colorado Press Association. “It will allow the news industry to deliver the news directly to the consumer in a variety of exciting new ways.”

Jane Seagrave, senior vice president and new chief revenue officer of AP, said the first set of products from the new Gateway unit would be applications for several new devices that have been introduced or announced in recent weeks, including the Apple iPad.

In developing new digital product and service opportunities, AP Gateway will tap AP’s previously announced News Registry, a service for tagging news content with usage rights and source attribution. Publishers using the services of the Registry, now in beta operation with more than 200 participating newspapers, will be able to opt into opportunities developed by the AP Gateway business unit.

AP Gateway expands the work started by AP in 2008, when it launched an initiative to ingest news content from AP members, categorize it and tag it with rich metadata. That aggregation of AP and member content enabled the launch of AP Mobile, a set of services for smart phones that feature AP content and local news from more than 1,000 member newspapers and broadcasters.

Said William Dean Singleton, chairman of the AP Board of Directors and chairman and chief executive officer of MediaNews Group: “We’ve already seen the power of the AP Cooperative in AP Mobile, among the most popular news applications for smart phones worldwide. AP Gateway builds on the strength of the Cooperative in the era of digital publishing.”

The announcement of AP Gateway comes less than a year after AP announced the News Registry, a platform for tagging, setting rights and tracking usage of news content across the Internet. The Registry will move out of beta operation this year and be open to all AP members and broadcasters by year’s end.

Over the past six years, AP has transformed its content creation, processing and distribution methods to make it easier for members of the news cooperative to take advantage of the new ways consumers are accessing news and information. At the heart of AP’s new platform is a searchable, multimedia database of AP content that members can access using flexible, Web-based portals.

“AP Gateway is the natural extension of our ongoing digital strategy,” said Curley in his Denver announcement. “Rather than just repurpose our content across formats, we now have a real opportunity to innovate and create differentiated experiences of the news across formats that will excite all of us, from producers to consumers of news.”

Curley also said that AP immediately would begin seeking feedback from members and customers.

About The AP
The Associated Press is the essential global news network, delivering fast, unbiased news from every corner of the world to all media platforms and formats. Founded in 1846, AP today is the largest and most trusted source of independent news and information. On any given day, more than half the world’s population sees news from AP.

Contact: Jack Stokes, AP Corporate Communications, 212.621.1730 or jstokes@ap.org

(Read the text of AP CEO Tom Curley's remarks to the Colorado Press Association)