AP Mobile helps members reach new audiences and create new revenue opportunities

AP Mobile, the first product from the AP’s Digital Cooperative, recently celebrated its one-year anniversary and announced that more than 55 million local stories have been read on AP Mobile, www.apnews.com, since its May 2008 launch.                                                                                     AP Mobile continues to help newspapers create new opportunities in the digital realm and the Las Vegas Review-Journal is one of the members using AP Mobile to reach a larger audience and share their content across platforms. Recently, the Las Vegas Review-Journal began offering photos with their text stories, attracting the widest audience possible with the fullest range of content.

Al Gibes, Executive Director of Stephens Media Interactive, explains more about what the Las Vegas Review-Journal is doing with AP Mobile in the short video below:

http://mfile.akamai.com/23931/wmv/ap.download.akamai.com/23931/APmobile.asx.

For more information on AP Mobile, contact interim chief of bureau, Andrew Fraser or visit http://www.ap.org/mobile/.

AP introduces interactive maps to measure economic stress at county, state levels

 AP has launched an index that provides monthly, multi-format updates on the economic stress of the United States down to the county level. The Associated Press Economic Stress Index weighs three economic variables -- unemployment, foreclosures and bankruptcy -- to produce a score on a scale of 0-100 that measures how the recession is affecting a county compared to all others. The maps will be updated monthly to reveal each county's AP Economic Stress score, as well as its unemployment, foreclosure and bankruptcy rates. These updates will be accompanied by a series of text stories, photos and video that illuminate and provide context to the data.              South Editor Brian Carovillano, Central Editor David Scott, Orlando correspondent Mike Schneider, and Raleigh reporter Mike Baker, collaborated over six months to develop the Stress Index. South multimedia editor Peter Prengaman, artist Carrie Osgood, developer John Balestrieri, newsroom innovation editor Troy Thibodeaux, interactive producer Jake O'Connell and database editor Allen Chen logged hundreds of hours to create one of AP's most ambitious interactives, with other key contributions from interactive editor Erin Hanafy, assistant business editor Matt Fordahl, features editor Jerry Schwartz, national writer Ted Anthony and Jon Resnick of Online Video.    For their creativity in developing an economic tool that will be a benchmark for the future, the team behind the stress map was awarded the Beat of the Week Prize for May 19, 2009.                                

To find out more about the Economic Stress Index, go to: http://www.ap.org/pages/about/pressreleases/pr_051109a.html or contact interim chief of bureau Andrew Fraser.

''Capital Culture,'' debuts early June

 The AP has introduced a new column this month that explores the cultural side of Washington, from the personalities and behind-the-scenes activities of the Obama White House to the peculiarities and intrigue that make the nation’s capital unique. Called ''Capital Culture,'' this fixture moves each Monday afternoon for use beginning at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday. 

To learn more, read the AP Advisory at: http://www.ap.org/pages/about/whatsnew/wn_060109a.html or contact supervising editor Lisa Tolin at ltolin@ap.org.

2009 AP Stylebook now available in print and online

 The 2009 edition of The Associated Press Stylebook is now available. This new edition features more than 60 new or updated entries, including more business, food, medical and Arabic terms and expanded information on major U.S. and international companies. AP Editor at Large Darrell Christian, Deputy Managing Editor Sally Jacobsen and Manager for News Administration David Minthorn coordinated the global team of AP staffers who collaborated on the update.

For the first time, the Stylebook has a "Quick Reference Guide" so users can quickly find answers to the most common questions on topics such as abbreviations and acronyms; homicide, murder and manslaughter; polls and surveys, and time element. 

The AP Stylebook Online has also been improved. We've added audio pronunciation guides for newsmakers, an updated search function and detailed information on U.S. and international companies. The Online version is updated throughout the year and allows users to customize with their own listings, examples and local variations on AP style. 

The new print edition and online subscriptions can be ordered online through the secure site, http://www.apbookstore.com. The order form also allows customers to create an invoice to pay by check or money order, credit or debit card, and member news organizations can request direct assessment. The new edition costs $11.75 for member news organizations, $11.75 for college bookstores and $18.95 retail.

AP’s Online Video Network team offers ''Open House'' trainings for subscribers

 AP’s Online Video Network team is offering subscribers a series of ''Open House'' training calls via WebEx, to update customers on recent progress in the Online Video Network.  They will be conducting one open house a month for at least the next three months and these will be open call-in sessions where OVN members can take part in the WebEx to learn more about upgrades and great things happening in the Online Video Network.  It's also a chance for members to ask questions.

Upcoming open house calls are scheduled on July 7 at 2 p.m. EST and July 9 at 11 a.m. EST and again on August 4 at 2 p.m. EST and August 5 at 11 a.m. EST. Both calls in July will focus on the top creative uses of the Online Video Network and both calls in August will focus on OVN improvements in design and technology.

For more information about how to participate in these open house calls, contact your interim chief of bureau Andrew Fraser.

Lifestyles

This month, Lifestyles presents a Father's Day gift guide and a look at the new "geek chic" for men. We'll also look ahead to July Fourth with plenty of grilling and picnic recipes; launch a Lifestyles/Washington column called Capitol Culture; and present an AP/Brides.com poll for the height of wedding season.

Important package dates include: 

• June 8 - Father's Day
• June 22 - July Fourth

If you would like to receive weekly Lifestyles digests, please contact supervising editor Lisa Tolin at ltolin@ap.org.

Special Editions

A Special Edition on ''Weddings'' moved Tuesday, June 2, with stories about gown designer Reem Acra; how to cut costs by using the Internet; tips for bridesmaids; why some couples are getting wedding insurance; managing the rehearsal-dinner guest list; and how to make a homemade cake topper. All stories were accompanied by photos.

The schedule for the rest of the year:

• July 14 - Back to School
• Aug. 4 - Fall Homes/Housekeeping 101
• Sept. 1 – Cars
• Oct. 6 - Diet/Exercise
• Nov. 3 – Holidays
• Dec. 1 – Weddings

For questions, contact supervising editor Julia Rubin at jrubin@ap.org or call 212-621-7199. 

Beats of the Week

Exclusive photos

The Associated Press makes great photos every day. We recently had two exclusive photographs (and video in one case) taken within hours amid intense competition on two different continents. Each shooter trounced the competition by planning ahead, finding the perfect location and staying ready for the unexpected. Rome-based photographer Alessandra Tarantino was covering an Italian industrialists meeting, where Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi was expected. Everybody was waiting for him to take the stage. But Tarantino, from the rear of the hall, aimed her 400mm at the Italian premier, still sitting in the audience. He started wiping his forehead, and to Tarantino's surprise, he was using a white cloth to hide a face powder puff and to dab his make-up.

In the meantime, in Virginia, Michael Vick was returning home from prison. Cooperation and planning, and good old-fashioned quick thinking, produced exclusive photos and video of Vick at home, testing the electronic monitoring device on the deck in the back of his house. When Vick pulled into his Hampton, Va., garage, he hid behind dark curtains in the vehicle. A short time later, federal agents arrived to fit him with the monitoring device. While the rest of the media stayed in front of the house, AP video stringer Kevin Sullivan and free-lance photographer Jason Hirschfeld went to a vacant lot next door with a view of Vick's backyard. It was a smart move. Vick appeared on a backyard deck for 30 seconds to test the device and AP got exclusive video and photos, the first of Vick since his release from prison.

Empty neighborhood

In the midst of the housing crisis, a team of AP reporters from five states answered the question, ''Where is the nation’s emptiest neighborhood?'' The real crisis is in the nation’s Rust Belt, hammered a generation ago in the recession of the 1980s, and yet to recover. Dan Sewell, Frank Bass, Jeff Karoub, Carolyn Thompson and Matthew Leingang used government data listing residential vacancies by census tract, finding 4 million homes that have been empty for at least 90 days, clustered in cities such as Flint, Mich.; Columbus, Ohio; Buffalo, N.Y., and Indianapolis. Bass, of Washington’s Enterprise Team, conceived the idea last year. He noticed that many of the nation’s census tracts with the highest ratio of empty housing were in Ohio or other Rust Belt states. He and his editor, Ted Bridis, brought in Sewell, the Cincinnati correspondent. Together they found the street names for the emptiest tracts in Cincinnati, many in that city’s poverty-stricken Over-the-Rhine neighborhood.

Months of reporting by Sewell and colleagues Karoub in Detroit, Thompson in Buffalo and Leingang in Columbus fleshed out the real dimensions of a forgotten housing crisis in America. Bass, meanwhile, produced state-by-state tables offered in advance of publication to bureaus and AP member newsrooms for localizing, and more than 600 outside news organizations downloaded the data. Photos and a 1,300-word AP IMPACT mainbar, written by Sewell and Bass, moved in advance to give member newsrooms time to provide their own localized stories.

UAW approval

Good reporting sometimes involves just the basic shoe leather: You can’t have face-to-face contact if you’re not there. When local leaders of the United Auto Workers met to consider a proposed deal to keep Chrysler alive, it was clear this was a story you couldn't get just by working the phones. So auto writer Tom Krisher asked the Detroit bureau if it could spare a reporter to stake out the meeting. It was a shot that paid off.

AP reporter David Goodman was there when UAW President Ron Gettelfinger emerged from the three-hour meeting after winning the support of local union presidents. And then, figuring he had nothing to lose, Goodman asked for a written summary of the deal. Gettelfinger agreed, and Goodman phoned details to Krisher in the bureau. The result: an eight-minute beat over the Wall Street Journal on the union approval. Then Goodman turned back to the full summary, and there, buried on the eighth page, was the key detail: In exchange for contract concessions, the UAW would get a 55 percent stake in the No. 3 U.S. automaker to settle a debt to a retiree health plan. Krisher quickly recast the story, keeping the AP ahead of others.