The Associated Press is saying very little since its CEO floated the possibility of charging some online customers an extra fee for early access to its stories.
But brief exchanges with AP executives by phone and e-mail lead me to some informed speculation about what the AP is up to -- and why it might not be such a bad idea.
Done right, the early access scheme could help the AP avoid one of the biggest drawbacks to pay walls: diminishing access to its news by users around the world. Done badly, the idea could put at risk one of the wire service's most cherished assets: speed. And whatever happens, the AP serves such a diverse constituency that it's almost certain to leave some of its member newspapers dissatisfied.
AP boss Tom Curley raised the pricing possibility Tuesday at the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents Club in the context of the AP's relationship with major Internet hubs and the development of its so-called
news registry project.
"I think we stand at an enviable moment where Microsoft and Google have decided to go to war," Curley said.
As AP correspondent Jeremiah Marquez reported in the next line of his report: "That provides an opening for content producers to benefit."
The AP quoted Curley as saying that "products can be reserved, and there can be exclusives given, perhaps on a time-base measure. Those who get access to that content and the rich multimedia or metadata that comes with it might get an exclusive for, oh, 20 or 30 minutes."
The AP's news registry project involves a complex system to "track and tag" all AP content.
Poynter colleagues have examined the plan in detail here, and the AP says Curley's comments in Hong Kong should be considered in the context of the registry plan.
For now, though, let's focus strictly on the idea of AP playing one or more of the Web giants against the others, dangling a half-hour jump on the competition in exchange for a stiff annual fee.
Financial wires have long charged higher rates for the timeliest delivery of such information as stock quotes, so the approach is not without precedent. As more and more news organizations wrestle with the need to create premium products, the AP's experiments will emerge as valuable case studies in high-stakes bets.
Time-based pricing could take any number of forms, including early access to an index of stories that would enable participating search engines to begin crawling the news sooner than the other guys.
Another option under discussion is the earlier release of actual stories, in effect setting up some AP customers as places that users would come to rely on for the earliest look at AP content.
What's interesting about these ideas is that they could generate much-needed revenue without jeopardizing journalism's civic purpose of wide distribution of news.
Might news consumers be inconvenienced by such a plan? Perhaps, if they were required to seek out the latest news via Search Engine X instead of Search Engine Y. Worst case scenario is that consumers would see the AP reports later rather than sooner. And the AP would presumably be savvy enough to lift delays on certain kinds of especially consequential reports.
One way or another, users would still be able to get their eyes on the news.
In a speech Friday in Beijing, Curley did not mention the early-access pricing. Without specifying exactly what he has in mind, he told the international media summit that "difficult choices" will be required to "get all the way across the burning bridge from analog to digital journalism."
Offering a sports analogy that he said he hoped would appeal to Chinese President Li, a basketball fan, Curley said the news industry needs the kind of "game changer" that the NBA introduced with its three-point stripe in 1986.
When it comes to the early-access premium, I prefer to think of it like an Amtrak trip from Boston to New York.
Customers can pay $62 for a four-and-a-half hour ride on the Northeast Regional train. Or they can spend an extra $31 on the Acela Express.
Acela offers fancier seats and an hour-shorter trip than the local. But passengers on both trains get to the same place.
