Allen Weiner

I had a great chat today with Jim Kennedy, vice president and strategy director for the Associated Press, regarding the AP’s outstanding live coverage of Election Night which was “broadcasted” via its member newspapers and broadcast affiliates…. Sorry, faithful followers, the analysis and take-aways from that conversation will be part of an upcoming report available only to our paying Gartner customers (a man’s got to eat), but we did talk a bit about Mobile News Network, AP’s mobile news application, marked by a Monopoly-like fedora icon on the iPhone. It’s free and you can find more information on it here.

So far, Kennedy says that 90 percent of AP’s member newspapers have signed up to participate in the Mobile News Network in a content sharing/revenue sharing arrangement with revenue splits based on traffic. The free application uses the iPhone’s location sensing to provide you local as well as national news, sports, business news and other assorted goodies. To date, its growth has been remarkable: Kennedy says May page views clocked in at about 2 million, but since launching the iPhone application on July 1, pages views have rocketed to 27 million last month.

I have written in the past about the growing conflict between AP and its member newspapers with the AP’s need to develop technology that can be leveraged by its partners. Here’s a case where an old dog (no disparagement meant to AP) came up with a cool trick its members must leverage not only to grow a new revenue stream, but also to use as part of their own digital branding efforts. AP’s approach to allow its members to add their own content and ads to their foundational technology runs 99 yards of the 100 yard dash; it’s up to local news organizations to run that last yard across the finish line.