Associated Press Members Split Over Focus On Online News Sites

As the economic pressure on newspapers intensifies, the Associated Press, a 162-year-old newsgathering cooperative for the industry, is beginning to fracture.

Long a newspaper-centric organization, the AP has shifted its focus in recent years. With readers and advertisers migrating away from news on printed paper and toward cable TV and the Web, the AP is devoting more of its resources to producing content for other news outlets. These include the very Web portals that pose the greatest competition for newspapers, such as Yahoo and Google, which are now among the AP's biggest customers.

For some editors, the AP's strategy, coupled with its high prices, amounts to a betrayal at a time when the industry is under threat. In recent months such frustrations have sparked a bitter war of words. The editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, for example, likened AP President and Chief Executive Tom Curley to the secretary-general of the Politburo at a convention in April.

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