AP's Mobile News reader is a stellar iPhone app: Future platform for magazines and e-books, not just newspapers?

The Associated Press wisely backed off from a major legal fight with bloggers over fair use. But the wire service remains on the S list of many Net folks because of a still-Draconian approach.

By contrast, the New York Times is itself in the aggregation business. The Times routinely pick up headlines from TeleRead and zillions of other Web sites via Blogrunner. Some are even from other big news organizations such as Reuters and the BBC.

If AP’s smart, it won’t just follow the Times’ example. It will also leverage its relationships with thousands of newspapers to present content in new ways. AP in fact could even break into areas such as magazine and book distribution. The key is for AP to think less of itself as the world’s editor and reinvent itself as a platform provider and aggregator.

Potential in mobile readers and maybe desktop apps

Especially in the fast-growing mobile world, a more flexible AP could reposition itself as a leading conduit for different media. Revenues might eventually dwarf AP’s existing ones from the Net and end the need for an RIAAish defense of obsolete biz models. That, in turn, could help fund original reporting, including the investigative kind needed to monitor America’s increasingly arrogant politicians.

In fact, AP’s new Mobile News Network reader for the iPhone is an excellent start toward reinvention. Download it now from the iPhone App Store! I’ll even commit a little heresy in this browser-loving universe and suggest that AP do a desktop version of the reader app. Or how about one optimized for tablets, including the rumored one from Apple?

The  current mobile incarnation of the app is much better organized than the Web editions of most newspapers, and you can scoot from story to story much faster.

What’s more, I notice AP has posted a Web-accessible version of the Mobile News Network for devices besides the iPhone. You can even customize the categories of items displayed on the home page (for example, Technology).

Enticing multimedia blend

The interface of the iPhone version might lack the home-page customization feature for now—at least I can’t find it. Also, AP could improve the news-update feature, so it’s automated with full control over such variables as update frequency.

Still, the app shines. Compared to the pokey New York Times mobile reader for the iPhone, the AP reader seems to load updates much faster. And it nicely blends text with photos and even videos. Study the screen shot. Let’s say you want local news—just click on the second icon from the left at the bottom. You’ll then see the stories nicely organized in a list similar to the one for the Showbiz section. Old-time journalists would say, “But what about different sizes of headlines? How to distinguish the stories in importance rather  than just sticking the latest at the top?” But I can easily see an optional sort toggle to replace the chronically organized display, or even star-style listings, just like movie reviews.

‘A fun little gem’

I’m not the only fan of the AP app. In the App Store reviews, users comments are overwhelmingly positive—for example, one reader’s praise for “the fluidity of interface and the breadth of its content,” including stories from his local newspaper, the Miami Herald. “The video feeds are…refreshingly fast, and the full page of photos…is a fun little gem.”

Bolstered by its technology partners at Verve Wireless, AP has a real winner here. As a reader, I hope that local newspapers follow the example of the Herald and other existing participants. Alas, the Washington Post, the big daily closest to me, isn’t in the network. That’s a a shame since the Post’s mobile Web site as viewed on the iPhone lacks the polish of the AP app.

Time for AP and Verve to make better use of the relationship?

Meanwhile Verve is apparently going its own way and offering wireless tech to the Times and other newspaper directly. Might Verve and AP, an investor in it, want to merge these efforts if other investors will allow this? Newspapers could still use Verve tech on their own. But from an AP perspective, it would be far, far better to exploit The Brand to the benefit of all. Most Web surfers don’t read just one newspaper; far, far better to integrate separate efforts more tightly.

The issue here is more than about technology. Besides branding, it’s about relationships between AP, content partners and potential partners.

Toward the Washington Post, Time and Philip Roth as options on the Mobile Reader—not just AP stories

The big weakness of AP’s current mobile reader is that it’s newspaper-centric and even there are lacking. But suppose that, by plugging in my ZIP code in Northern Virginia, I could read not just AP news and local sections of participating papers but also:

• The entire editions of newspaper that belonged to AP and participated in the Mobile News Network. Also, the reader could be made flexible enough to accommodate specific sections within newspapers—for example, the Style section of the Post or a hunting news section of a newspaper in rural Mississippi. AP needs to think of the reader as just the beginning of what could be a powerful platform for both free and paid content. The key is flexibility and ease of customization not just for consumers but also content providers. Make it a snap for local newspapers to deviate from the standard template. In this fashion, AP could save the newspaper business a fortune in development costs. Meanwhile big dailies could avoid such silliness as paper-specific readers. Do we really need a New York Times Reader or perhaps a future Washington Post Reader? Regardless of the egos of newspaper designers, most people are more interested in actual content than in presentation, just so the results are polished and easy to use. That said, perhaps in the future the reader could even offer skins for different papers for people who still insisted on a localized appearance.
• Magazines. Text is text. It’s silly to limit the reader—the app or the humans using it—just to newspapers. Humans could choose the magazines they wanted in the mix. If users wanted just newspapers, so be it. But let them, not AP, make the choices.
• E-books. I could use the AP reader to search for e-books or create alerts so I’d know about relevant new titles next time I logged on the reader. Philip Roth is a favorite of mine. When he came out with a new book, I’d see not just an excerpt but also related news items and links to bookstores, both E and P, as well as book reviews. AP might even help arrange for stable links among books or even book-newspaper links.

Just why the devil should AP and its news reader restrict itself to the wire service’s own stoires and to members’ newspaper content? I know the ramifications of this question. After all, the AP is a news cooperative rather than an ordinary corporation, but then we’re still talking about a business in search of sustainability. Better to deviate from the original model than go out of business or to shrink as United Press International did. Remember the classic line about railroads. They would still dominate the long-distance transportation scene if they had embraced such newfangled inventions as trucks and airplanes.

Different biz models

But how would the reinvented AP make money?

Suppose the software included product directories, with pages I could set up to alert me to local bargains in groceries, used cars, you name it—information that might show up on the home page or others. Or via e-mail or RSS?

AP could take a tiny slice of the revenue that the newspapers and other content providers generated with their local sales staffs.

In some cases, content might be ad-supported; in others, for-fee by the item or subscription; in yet others a mix.

Perhaps AP would deliberately stay out of direct ad sales itself, so as not to compete with partners. Or maybe it could do the opposite and offer bulk buys, with its profits kicked back to partners and also spent on newsgathering.

Who knows? Maybe the aggregation possibilities and efficiencies of a turbo-charged reader app could even help the newspaper business recover some of the advertising lost to media such as Craig’s List.

Not a content monopoly, please—and an open platform approach is a “must”

Let me add a caveat, an important one. Beyond the anti-trust concerns, I’d hate as a reader and citizen for AP to be the only major source of aggregated content—not that it could happen anyway. In fact, I’d urge newspapers and book and magazine publishers to offer independent distribution as well, and use other channels such as Amazon and cooperate with Google News rather than fight it

But the above would be one way for newspapers and book publishers to balance out the influence of Google and Amazon—perhaps with tech and financing help from other major Net-related companies.

Key here would be (1) open standards and (2) a less controlling attitude than AP now has toward content.

Open standards would make it easier to pick up content and reposition to it, maybe even between media, so that it would be easier for newspapers to run book excepts and for books to carry dynamic updates from newspapers. An improved ePub standard, anyone? If the standard won’t fit in with the existing AP reader, the efforts should be made to reconcile this.

As for the control issue, AP is infatuated with words like trusted sources. But trusted by whom? In more than a few situations, Air America listeners will interpret “trusted” rather differently from National Review fans. I can even see, yes, a place for bloggers. Just as with the Kindle, they could make their content available for access through the AP reader and share subscription or ad revenue. AP needs to learn from the $37-million debacle of the old New Century Network, which, understandably, lost out to the more open Web.

Within the reader app, of course, AP could still use its own logo on AP-originated content and let users work out the trust issue for for themselves. Meanwhile a terms of service clause within the reader could make it clear that AP did not vet or endorse content originated from others.

How AP could still make money, even with an open approach

But how would AP make money, if anyone could build a reader with standards? I’ve already given the answer. The value AP could add would be its existing relationships with newspapers and new ones with Net companies. AP could serve as a clearinghouse for, say, book excerpt deals—enabling books chapters to show up in newspapers. Or how about a clearinghouse for linking deals, so that a book writer could link to a newspaper and know that the  link wouldn’t die? Or for newspaper-created videos in e-books? Or ad-related deals?

In case AP doesn’t want to act…or even if it does…

Based on AP’s record so far, I won’t get my hopes up for the extra-inclusive, mutlimedia approach I’ve proposed. But for what it’s worth, those are my thoughts—-not just for AP and Verve Wireless, but also other content and tech companies.

Note: This is a living document, even if I’m the only one writing it. I’ll welcome comments from TeleBlog community members and from companies mentioned here, so I can refine the ideas here. I’ll also welcome pointers to similar proposals. I’m hardly the only one to feel frustrated over the idea of newspaper-specific reader apps that each can display just one paper’s content.