CNN reaches a larger audience

By: Allison McNeal

As some newspapers are feeling the effects of lack of readership and layoffs, CNN is pitching a new alternative to newspapers.

Their new tactic is to release a CNN Wire, which can cover large national and international events, as well as local ones.

With its CNN Wire, the company is going up against the largest news-gathering operation in the world: The Associated Press.

One strategy that CNN is currently pitching is to convince editors that it can offer something outside of their broadcast spectrum.

"The reality is we don’t have a lot of relationships with newspapers,” said Jim Walton, president of CNN Worldwide. “We have relationships with TV stations around the world.”

This announcement has come at a time where many newspapers are unhappy with the cost of the AP. Some newspapers have even given notice that they intend to leave this organization.

Newspapers such as The Columbus Dispatch, for example, paid more than $800,000 a year. Others, including The Star Tribune of Minneapolis and the Tribune Company, one of the largest newspaper chains, have also given notice that they plan to drop out of the service.

In response, the AP announced that it would reduce prices, which could result in saving $30 million annually for its member newspapers.

According to the New York Times, "CNN amounts to another expansion of its operations at a time of severe cutbacks across the media industry, especially at newspapers, which are facing the wrenching circumstances of both a faltering economy and the continuing flight of advertising dollars out of print and onto the Internet."

A disadvantage to this new medium is that a number of newspaper editors say the component of the AP service that would be hardest to replace is still photography. CNN said it did not plan to offer photography but would offer streaming Web video for newspapers’ sites.

Even during financial cutbacks and the slump in the economy, CNN has shown that citizens want another medium to receive information. If newspapers are not willing to pay the expansive sum the AP requires, CNN can give people information they deserve.