Associated Press Comes Late to the Port City

The Associated Press set up its Mobile bureau inside the Press Register building on Sept. 1, 1945.

According to the Press Register, this was was the first time any news service had assigned a full-time staff in South Alabama.

If true, that seems amazing since the news service had been around since 1848.

In the years after World War II, the newspaper came to depend on the AP and other news services for reports on national and international events.

In recent years, the AP's revenue has suffered along with that of its member newspapers. Gary Pruitt, the AP’s president and CEO, reported at the agency’s 2013 annual meeting that “In the past five years, as newspaper revenues have fallen by 40 to 50 percent, AP has reduced its rates by the same amount.” The news agency had millions of dollars of bank debt.

U.S. newspapers once accounted for 100 percent of AP revenue. They now constitute only about 20 percent of total revenue.

Somewhat cynically, Mary Junck, chair of the AP Press Board of Directors, told the annual meeting “We have tackled costs the same way you have—with a sharp pencil and an ongoing process of transforming the way we do business.” Translation: The AP has cut jobs and frozen pensions.

What will be interesting to watch is whether the AP will continue to have the same kind of influence over news coverage, news style and other news issues in the digital age as it had in the print age.