AUSTIN, TEXAS: The Associated Press, working with news providers, is forming an independent agency to act as a rights clearning house for original news reporting.
AP President and CEO Tom Curley announced the initiative at the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association meeting in Austin, Texas. The move was approved by the AP board of directors at its quarterly meeting in mid October.
“The clearinghouse will answer a need we heard from multiple businesses for an efficient mechanism to access content from a range of news providers for a variety of uses,” said Curley. “This extends to the news industry an approach that has worked successfully in other industries with similar challenges around digital usage.”
Simultaneously, AP is working to expand the development of “white label” apps and content modules for handheld devices.
More than 70 AP member newspaper and broadcasters have already gone live with white label smartphone apps developed by AP, in conjunction with Verve Wireless, Inc. AP also is working on private label iPad applications.
Under the rights clearinghouse plan, an independent agency established by AP and other news organizations would provide rights clearance and privacy tools; a variety of ways to license content from publishers; and media intelligence services.
The clearinghouse would build on the capabilities of the AP News Registry, which allows participants to tag, track and measure use of their content online.
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