And the reason, as it was before, is purely economical. The Associated Press' The Wire news server allows local newspapers to automatically put their nameplates atop continuously updated wire feeds, unseen and untouched by local editors. Even before The Wire, many newspaper groups, pressed to trim costs in a medium that has proved less lucrative than expected, had centralized wire editing for all their online members. Each member of Ogden Newspapers, for example, could serve up generic-branded national and international news, sports and weather, direct from AP via a central site that many of Ogden's wire editors probably have never have seen, much less worked on. While most InfiNet newspapers merely linked to the site and called it by name, some seemed to pass it off as their own front page.
Advance now features similar services at places like Michigan and Alabama Live.
Online, however, central editing of wire copy is seen not as a minus but as a plus. Online, that means illusory 24-hour staffing and inexpensive, homogenized national and international coverage instead of costly local editing and local coverage. Most combat this by presenting the image of being all things to all people. Time will tell which is the more prudent course, economically and journalistically.