The Sun News of Myrtle Beach, The State Newspaper of Columbia, and the Island Packet are owned and managed by McClatchy News in South Carolina.
According to Poynter, McClatchy papers across America have dropped the AP News Feeds from their online content.
McClatchy’s unexpected decision to separate from the AP came as a surprise to the Associated Press (A.P.).
As per The New York Times, an email reviewed by them stated that Kathy Vetter, the senior vice president of news and audience at McClatchy, expressed the following: “With this decision, we will no longer pay millions for content that serves less than 1 percent of our readers. In most cases we have found replacements. However, we are still working on a universal solution for state ‘wires’ content.”
Gannett, the owner of Greenville Online, along with The Sun News – McClatchy, will persist in utilizing the election results data provided by the AP.
Poynter questions, Is it possible that this discontinuation of feed services is a negotiation ploy for a new agreement with the AP?
Lauren Easton is the Vice President of Corporate Communications at the Associated Press.
In a statement to the Times, Easton mentioned that contract discussions with Gannett and McClatchy were held and “have been productive and are ongoing.” Easton added, “We appreciate that these are difficult decisions to make and deeply understand the challenges the news industry faces. At the same time, this would be a disservice to news consumers across the U.S. who would no longer see fact-based journalism from The AP.”
There seems to be further developments waiting in this narrative.
SUN NEWS
The Sun News is doing excellent investigative work on the CCU Theatre tax issues in the Arts and Innovation District managed by the Downtown Redevelopment Corportation and the City of Myrtle Beach. Great questions are being asked with few answers.
Now, the Sun News is distributed only a few times weekly and consists of just a few pages. While the AP is a very liberal reporting agency, losing that content would require the news operation to hire more writers or find a replacement.
McClatchy, operating under its brand name, underwent a transition in 2020 when Chatham Asset Management acquired the newspapers and led them out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
Chatham Asset Management finalized the purchase of McClatchy on September 4, 2020. The acquisition encompassed all 30 news organizations, including the Sun News, and their employees, with a total deal value of $312 million.
