The Associated Press today announced a program to promote nonprofit investigative journalism, including articles from ProPublica, to its members for republication. The material will be distributed to AP members -- including essentially all of the nation's leading newspapers -- through the Web-based delivery system AP Exchange. There will be no charge to AP members for using the stories, which, in addition to ProPublica, will come from the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Center for Public Integrity, and the Investigative Reporting Workshop. Announcement of the new program, described as a six-month pilot project, came at the annual convention of Investigative Reporters and Editors, held this year in Baltimore.
This move by AP should provide further impetus to the movement we've been pushing for editors and publishers to steal our stories under our Creative Commons license. We've been pleased recently to see ProPublica articles end up in the Orlando Sentinel and the Arizona Star, and on Web sites ranging from Huffington Post to RealClearPolitics to MainStreet.com. Keep those thefts coming.