AP Launches Its First Consumer E-Commerce Venture

This November 21, 1998 article from Editor & Publisher, written by David Noack, reports on the Associated Press launching its first electronic commerce venture aimed at consumers: a fee-based archive for its online news service, “The Wire.” The service was available through The Wire’s Web site and the 250 online newspapers that hosted the AP’s online news service, with an official announcement expected around Nov. 23.

The subscription archive covered national, international, sports, financial and business stories dating back to July 1, 1997 — a big jump from the free two-week search, which held about 10,000 articles versus the new service’s 250,000. Individual pricing ran from $2.95 for a single article to a $99.95 “Annual Pass” for 1,500 articles, with a 20% revenue-sharing arrangement for newspapers that signed up customers.

Jim Kennedy, director of AP Multimedia Services, said the e-commerce component had been in the plans since 1995:

“This will be the first time that we have a text service of our own that goes directly to the consumer.”

“This was part of our original planning, but it took some time to get over some of these hurdles that we had with technically making this available to consumers and also editorially ensuring the integrity of the content.”