The Associated Press is killing its “asap” service in October.
About 200 newspapers subscribed to this service.
It was launched in 2005 as a response to the growth of blogs and youth tabs.
ASAP has 24 staff members.
It offers a variety of packages and reports (including a lot of video and photo galleries) targeting a younger and/or quirkier audience than the standard AP report.
A good service, but in our Young Readers Global Report for the World Association of Newspapers (WAN), one of our main recommendations was not to develop ghetto sections for young readers.
They hate this kind of Guantanamo mentality.
As we said:
Over the last several months, INNOVATION has conducted a global search for the most creative ways to capture young readers.
We have also carried out intense internal discussions among our consultants and clients, and have come to this radical conclusion:
Special sections, tailored supplements, clever Web sites and multimedia projects will not by themselves attract new readers to newspapers.
Millions have been spent on such projects over the past few years, and almost nothing is working.
