ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
The nation’s only newswire service is blowing more blue smoke than a third-hand Ozito whipper snipper at the moment and is now asking people in the community for donations to keep going.
AAP was once a top-of-the-range four-stroke whipper snipper that provided a service that hundreds of regional and metro newspapers relied upon each day.
A newspaper without AAP content wouldn’t be enough to start a living room fire with. Even with a few generous dollops of diesel on top.
But after years of being undermined by its former owners, Nine and News Corp, the news organ’s piston rings began to leak.
“We’d been blowing thick plumes of blue smoke for a while. We were burning a fuckload of oil each day. Cylinder compression was low and then all of a sudden,”
“They said we were being shut down.”
But AAP was saved from the death by a group of super-rich people who have trouble sleeping at night and other benevolent figures in our community.
Since then, AAP has been running as a non-for-profit but without aid from the Federal and State Governments, the news service now relies on its existing customers like independent regional newspapers such as The Advocate and the News Corp-owned Betoota Bugle – to the major dailies such as The Australian and Nine’s newspapers.
But that isn’t enough – and if the nation allows AAP to atrophy, News Corp will pick up almost all regional newspaper and regional news services without any regulatory approval. News would have a monopoly of news services. It would also give them blanket ownership or regional radio news, which those in remote areas depend upon. News will be able to do all of this without having to own a radio license or any regulatory oversight.
As most of you will probably do nothing, it seems we’re all OK with it.
And all you have to do is do nothing for this to happen. If you want to do something, do what you can. Take a look at the link below.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/aap-needs-you
More to come.
