So following up on the AP yelling about their work being quoted - it seems that their staff does the same thing.

Oops.

The real problem for the AP is their business model. Like the RIAA, they don't in and of themselves add value - they serve as a middle source for stuff other people create. Pre-net, that was a model that had merit. Post-net, not so much. As Bill Hobbs noted:

Once newspapers figure out that they don't need the AP to serve as the middleman and clearinghouse for sharing their stories and photos with other papers, taking a cut of the revenue - all they need is a good central database and accounting program - the AP will find itself on the endangered species list.

Which is exactly right. Why pay the AP for a slapped off rewrite of a story you can find yourself with a search engine? It's not as if there's not a valuable service for the AP to provide though:

The AP would be wise to shift its resources now to generating more original content, such as covering stories that most newspapers can't get to. High-quality original content is still worth something these days.

Which is again correct. While there's no value-add to paying the AP to rewrite a story you can find yourself, there is value in paying the AP to get stories you can't cover yourself. Local news outlets don't have correspondents all over the world; the AP does. The sooner they figure out that they have a real business, the better off we'll all be.

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