Wow, can you believe the Associated Press chief Tom Curley said this (which was overheard by the NY Times) about having some competition in the newswire business?
"The current CNN wire, if you look at it truly is still, and remarkably, abysmally written," he said. "However, they’re interviewing A.P. people, we know, and that can be transformed. And if you have enough money and you have enough ego and enough desire, you can fix that in a hurry."
Apparently Mr. Curley's ego hasn't been bruised by the fact that cash-strapped newspapers across the country are dropping AP wire service.
You know, it's possible he's right and the CNN wire (which I haven't seen) is terrible right now. My point is, CNN has done this before. They've launched a service in a more or less slapdash manner and then made it work. Starting with, you know, CNN.
Specifically, their NewSource service -- in which local TV stations agree to share their video in exchange for free CNN video -- preceded Internet video by about 20 years yet completely anticipated the day when viewers would no longer care where a piece of information was sourced ... only where it was aggregated, whether it be the Huffington Post or Drudge or CNN.
This is a shrewd move by CNN to extend its product line even further.
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