The Las Vegas Review-Journal has launched an ambitious local mobile video site using the The AP Mobile News Network, says AP President Tom Curley, speaking at the NAA Annual Convention in San Diego. The site extends The Review-Journal’s leadership onto the video platform , and it figures into the way the newspaper is telling stories, he adds. The LVRJ is a Stephens Media company.
“The public sees newspapers as the best source for news . This is another channel,” says Curley (a former publisher of USA Today, and decidedly not related to Rob Curley, who is president of Greenspun Interactive, the publisher of The Las Vegas Sun, which is The LVRJ’s smaller crosstown rival). Curley notes that the site includes The Review-Journal’s logo and branding. “It is the right channel at the right time in the right format,” he says.
Video has been a big bet for AP’s Digital Consortium model, which seeks to provide newspapers with all kinds of searchable digital content at a cost that might be just 20 percent of what they’d pay to develop it themselves. Its success is vital to the future of AP, which has seen some newspapers drop out to save money. Others have dropped out to develop their own for-profit consortium models.