Those AP reporters must hate their relatives, since every other article they penned about Thanksgiving this year was actually about why you shouldn't visit your family for Thanksgiving this year.

SWINE FLU
The AP says:

Your family might be sharing more than turkey and pumpkin pie this Thanksgiving. Swine flu may also be on the table - and at crowded airports and shopping malls.

Just as the pandemic seems to be waning around the country, some health officials are worried that holiday gatherings could lead to more infections.

This is a really good excuse, because it makes it seem like you care too much about your family to visit them on Thanksgiving. Simply take out an ad on Craigslist for a swine flu-stricken person to come over and lick your face tomorrow. (Who knows, you might even get a date out of it!) Then call your family and tell them you didn't want your frail grandfather to get sick and not be able to enjoy his last Thanksgiving. They will totally understand.

THE ECONOMY
Writes the AP

There's still family, turkey and football, but one Thanksgiving tradition is taking a hit this year. Millions of Americans are spending the holiday at home, saying the poor economy has made it unaffordable to hit the road or board a plane.

"It's too expensive," said Benita Hall, 24, a nurse's aide who can't afford to travel from Cincinnati to Atlanta to see her mother and siblings. "It's depressing because you want to be with your family for the holidays."

This excuse is significantly inferior to swine flu. Really, unless you are close to indigent or a subsistence farmer or something you cannot use this excuse without coming off looking like a cheap, ungrateful asshole. Do you have a TV? Sell it. Do you have a job? Work overtime. Your parents fed you and clothed you and pretended that their marriage was alright for years—the least you can do is spend a few bucks to hear them tell embarrassing stories about your pubescence to your girlfriend while you sit there really wanting a cigarette but for some strange, deep-seated reason you have never told your parents that you picked up smoking so you've got to wait for everyone to go to bed and then walk around the block furtively glancing over your soldier like you're 14 again.

AIRPORTS

Writes the AP:

Fewer people are expected to fly this holiday season, but travelers shouldn't expect a full reprieve from the horrid flight delays of Thanksgivings past, especially if they need to land anywhere near New York City.

Despite some recent improvements, the Big Apple's three major airports continue to be the country's worst air travel bottleneck...On busy days, the lines of planes landing at LaGuardia Airport can still stretch unbroken in the sky for 40 miles.

This would be a good excuse to use if you don't want to see your family this Thanksgiving and you also want to make a larger point about necessary Federal Aviation Administration reforms. (And if your dad happens to be an FAA official you can get an extra dig in for that time he put your cat down because you forgot to clean your room.)

Or, you know, you could just man up and visit your family. They miss you and, even if they can only show it by nitpicking your most insignificant flaws and constantly questioning your sexuality, they do love you.

• 1. The Republican National Committee Is a Ponzi Scheme Palin says McCain charged her $50,000 to be vetted, and the RNC promised it'd pay her back when they won. Obviously, she was not reimbursed. Also obviously, McCain's camp denies this claim.
• 
  
• 2. Ethics Complaints Are Expensive At the time of her resignation as Alaska governor, Sarah's legal bills had reached $500,000.
• 
  
• 3. She Didn't Want the Clothes Also expensive: Her family's $150K makeover wardrobe, which McCain's staff forced them to buy—against their will!—for their debut. Sarah says the price tags flabbergasted her, and that she was told the clothes were "part of the convention."
• 
  
• 4. She Hates Katie Couric Palin "writes at length" about Katie Couric, who is biased, "badgering," and ignorant. Biggest Couric surprise: the McCain camp hired Katie's stylist for Sarah.
• 
  
• 5. Mostly, Though, She Pities Katie Sarah Palin's infamous interview with Couric was given out of pity, because Sarah wanted to do the ratings-averse female anchor a favor. Also, campaign aide Nicolle Wallace (the scapegoat for Palin's $150K shopping fiasco) said Couric would identify with her as a "working mother."
• 
  
• 6. She's Naming Names Speaking of campaign scapegoats: Mark Halperin reports that Palin names the campaign aides she thinks undermined her on the trail. Smart money's on Wallace and Steve Schmidt getting dragged through the mud.
• 
  
• 7. Her Literary Taste Tends Toward the 7th Grade Palin's favorite books are middle school classics The Pearl by John Steinbeck and Animal Farm by George Orwell, the latter of which she considers an uplifting political story. If those pigs beat the odds, so can I.
• 
  
• 8. The Campaign Handled Bristol's Pregnancy Wrong Palin says she rewrote the first public statement about her daughter's pregnancy, but the McCain campaign kept her "bottled up" and used their original statement instead. She found out when she heard a news anchor reading it on TV. She thought the campaign's statement inappropriately glamorized teen pregnancy.
• 
  
• 9. Levi Who? Most conspicuous absence: Levi Johnston, who is not mentioned even once in the book, including Palin's retelling of events at which he was present.
• 
  
• 10. No Flipping to the Back Second-most conspicuous absence: an index, which Halperin says is "subtle revenge on the party's Washington establishment, whose members tend to flip to the back pages and scan for their own names." This is possible, but I'm much more inclined to believe that her editors plumb forgot that this peculiar, vapid woman they were working with is an actual politician, who actually interacts with important people, and slipped into Chicken Noodle Soup for the Soul mode by accident.

• 
  Update: AP's copy of Going Rogue wasn't an advanced copy—it was a leak!

It's old hat that Fairey's been embattled in a court case over fair use, the idea that something like an image can be used in the context of news if it doesn't sap value from the source's original work. That source, in this case, being the wire news behemoth Associated Press, who are more or less trying to find away to put a price on information so blogs and the like can't take "their" news and do stuff with it like talk about it. But for the time being, Fairey's the guy the AP's suing the pants off of because he's a high profile figure who created a high profile piece of art from their high profile photgraph. And they want some of that young, idealistic money shelled out to Fairey, who's made a grip from his posters. He's probably lost quite a bit fighting this.

In a recent court deposition, Fairey identified one photo as the one he used as the inspiration for his poster, while the AP identified theirs-taken by wire photographer Mannie Garcia-as the one he used.

Well, he "realized" early on that it was Garcia's photo that he had, in fact, used, and then deleted a bunch of shit on his computer to wipe clean evidence that he knew any better. Whoops. Time to confess!

In an attempt to conceal my mistake I submitted false images and deleted other images. I sincerely apologize for my lapse in judgment and I take full responsibility for my actions which were mine alone. I am taking every step to correct the information and I regret I did not come forward sooner. I am very sorry to have hurt and disappointed colleagues, friends, and family who have supported me in this difficult case and trying time in my life. I am also sorry because my actions may distract from what should be the real focus of my case – the right to fair use so that all artists can create freely. Regardless of which of the two images was used, the fair use issue should be the same.

Whoops. You can't forget: Fairey's also lawsuit happy to artists who ape or parody his stuff, so it's hard to feel too bad for Fairey, even if he is trying to cover his legal costs and make a complex argument by being an asshole to someone els just like him. Birds of a feather. Also, Fairey lied to Bucky Turco at ANIMAL New York in an email, but Bucky doesn't get his own apology from Fairey. Short end of the stick, these bloggers get. That's HOPE for you.

According to Harvard's Nieman Journalism Lab, AP CEO Tim Curley (pictured) recently let slip at a Hong Kong gathering of journalists that the AP hasn't even talked to Google as part of its complete overhaul of the way it syndicates content online. Why bother, when Microsoft is clearly so lethally good, online? "They know how to have a conversation," for one, unlike a certain other tech giant, plus they gave AP this, just, killer demo:

Microsoft this month has some new technology that it's unveiling that will be much more visually dramatic than anything you've seen before. Multimedia in ways you haven't thought about yet. We've seen it, we've seen the technology.

Oh, and Microsoft also just happens to have basically promised to give AP top ranking — "privileging" their content, as Nieman puts it — over other sources reporting the same news. Never mind if other sources add information to a linked AP story, or generate lots of buzz by using an AP link to launch an in-depth opinion piece. Quality = AP, always. Which is why Microsoft Bing will rule the internet, real soon now. What could possibly go wrong?

Okay, fine. Maybe questions about rape and specific instances that go transcend our typical definitions of crime are more interesting, but this one's definitely the most fun. Our tipline's been blowing up with it.

Business Insider caught it before anyone on the front pages of Forbes. We got some pretty great screengrabs of it from the Times. Basically, instead of the Polanski story, this went up instead:

Swiss arrest Polanski on US request in sex case
Associated Press, 09.27.09, 10:41 AM EDT

OK, can you do some more probing? New York will want to know
frank's out today.
i checked already, and so did zurich. they say the question is irrelevant. he answered me with the quote i used, about we knew when he was coming this time. he's been here many times in the past, we think.
thx brad. aptn is aware, but unfortunately won't make it in time, but is hoping to catch tail end.
i'm pushing out another writethru with some more background details before press conference.
no surprise, new york is really hot on this.
they particularly want to know why now. (has he never set foot in switzerland before?) sheila, theorizes that's because they're under intense pressure over ubs and want to throw the U.S. a bone, but can you check with justice department sources there?
is frank around too, or are you alone?
u can tell aptn press conf 1700 (15 gmt) in bern at the parliament
i'll watch it live on internet

Heh. Who uses the word "probing" anymore? Also, isn't "probing" in relation to a rape story slightly off-color, even in notes? Maybe my mind's in the gutter. Then again, I am in New York, and I would want to know, and want to know WHY. New Yorkers: we love a good Hollywood rape extradition saga!

Also, looks like the AP gets stonewalled by those goddamn Swiss quite often. Good to know they like to theorize about countries throwing one another "a bone" sometime before checking with their Swiss Justice Department sources over whether or not those hot chocolate drinking narcs, you know, owe us one. The Associated Press: who needs to steal their content when they can just give us their notes instead?

Harvard's Nieman Foundation obtained an internal AP memo showing the wire service plans to ape Wikipedia, the user-written reference that dominates many Google searches. But instead of writing its own concise summaries, like Wikipedia, AP will simply generate "landing pages" automatically, compiling basic links to its own content, and then having its members link to those pages. Robot spam! Felix Salmon of internet-loving Reuters doesn't think this will work, since Google's algorithms are pretty smart; we don't think that matters. Technical cluelessness doesn't seem to have ever sidelined an AP initiative before.

(Image via)

Flickr, but of course! The wonderful photo-sharing community is rife with hi-res pictures by professionals, iPhone amateurs, and people who just bought their first DSLR who can more or less take pictures just as well as the professionals because they own an expensive camera. Check out this offer, from one of their agents:

Do you have good plane crash porn? Hit the AP up! They want to buy it and you make you a stah. Meanwhile, we'll stick with Tumblr and Twitter pulls because they're free and we don't really have to wait for them and also, people just give them to us. To which I say : | indeed.

[Tip via Bucky @ Animal NY.]

Thomson Reuters' media group president Chris Ahearn recently tweeted that his company "stands ready to help those who wish an alternative to the AP," the Reuters competitor that has proclaimed it is "mad as hell" at various internet fiends. AP is trying to charge people for quoting as few as five words of its content.

Ahearn has elaborated on his "alternative" in a blog post, writing that too many traditional media organizations waste manpower "recycling commodity news" and that they should instead seek to retool, including by forging a new "win-win relationship" with new media. The executive dispenses bluntly with those who would point the finger, like AP:

Blaming the new leaders... or saber-rattling and threatening to sue are not business strategies – they are personal therapy sessions. Go ask a music executive how well it works... Let's stop whining and start having real conversations.

It sounds like Ahearn has started just such a "real conversation" himself. TechDirt has already blogged back. And Reuters is even authorizing bloggers to "hyperlink" and excerpt its side of things, as God and the U.S. Code intended. Imagine that.

(CORRECTION: This post originally stated that Ahearn was president of all Thomson Reuters; in fact he is president of the firm's "media group.")

(Pic: Reuters)

The U.S.'s own ossified organizations have been grappling with Twitter strategy as well. Among traditional news media, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, New York Times and Associated Press have gone so far as to admonish staff on how to use their personal Twitter accounts; despite lacking a First Amendment, the British government's "Twitter strategy" does not go that far.

Using the AP news wire's authoritarian guidelines as a point of comparison, here's how the U.S. stacks up against Britain when it comes to Twitter rules:





How much does Twitter rock?

• British government: " The platform is experiencing a phenomenal adoption curve in the UK and being used increasingly by government departments, Members of Parliament... [it] has the potential to deliver many benefits in support of our communications objectives."
• AP:"These networks also have become an important tool for AP reporters to gather news – both for big, breaking stories and in cases in which we're seeking out members of the public who might serve as sources for our stories. And they're a prime source of citizen journalism material."

How might Twitter destroy our organization, forever?

• British government: "Inappropriate content being published in error, such as... protectively marked, commercially or politically sensitive information... Require clearance of all tweets through nominated people in digital media team."
  
• AP: "Posting material about the AP's internal operations is prohibited on employees' personal pages, and employees also should avoid including political affiliations in their profiles and steer clear of making any postings that express political views or take stands on contentious issues."

When is it terrible to befriend someone, on the internet?

• British government: "We will not initiate contact by following individual, personal users as this may be interpreted as interfering / ‘Big Brother'-like behaviour... We will, however, follow back anyone who follows our account."
• AP: "Managers should not issue friend requests to subordinates, since that could be awkward for employees. It's fine if employees want to initiate the friend process with their bosses."

Can Twitter be 'fun?' Or do 'fun' and 'failure' start the same way?

• British government: Fun=fun! "In keeping with the ‘zeitgeist' feel of Twitter, our tweets will be about issues of relevance today or events/opportunities coming soon. For example it will not be appropriate to cycle campaign messages without a current ‘hook'.
  
• AP: Fun=failure! "It's not just like uttering a comment over a beer with your friends: It's all too easy for someone to copy material out of restricted pages and redirect it elsewhere for wider viewing."
  

How, exactly, should we exploit Twitter?

• British government: "While tweets may occasionally be ‘fun', we should ensure we can defend their relation back to Our objectives. Where possible there should be an actual link to related content or a call to action, to make this credibility explicit. "
  
• AP: "Feel free to link to AP material that has been published... link to member and customer sites... try to vary the links to spread the traffic around. It's a good idea to reference the AP in the promo language. "

[Template Twitter Strategy for Government Departments]

(Pic: Carrot Creative on Twitter)

About seven-tenths of one percent of total 2008 newspaper ad revenue of $38 billion. And that's assuming the worrywarts are correct; the $250 million number was provided to the New York Times by the CEO of an anti-news piracy startup Attributor which has an interest in over-estimating the size of the problem.

So solving the piracy problem overnight would do basically nothing to fix the news industry's woes, financially speaking. Strategically, it wouldn't help much, either, since sites that illegally copy wire stories tend to be very low-stakes operations, usually Google spammers trying to make small change via AdSense (see Wired's explanatory chart). More dangerous to newspapers is the explosion in Web outlets that give news without infringing on copyrights (with the possible exception of the Huffington Post, which could stand to dial back its "excerpting" a notch).

UPDATE:Recently departed nytimes.com general manager Vivian Schiller, now at NPR, tells Newsweek that "news is a commodity:"

I am a staunch believer that people will not in large numbers pay for news content online. It's almost like there's mass delusion going on in the industry-They're saying we really really need it, that we didn't put up a pay wall 15 years ago, so let's do it now. In other words, they think that wanting it so badly will automatically actually change the behavior of the audience. The world doesn't work that way. Frankly, if all the news organizations locked pinkies, and said we're all going to put up a big fat pay wall, you know what, more traffic for us. News is a commodity; I'm sorry to say.

(Disclaimer: Attributor CEO Jim Pitkow once headed Moreover, the syndication company co-founded by Gawker Media chief Nick Denton.)

(Pic via Ioan Sameli)

The AP has also invented an amazing new "microformat," a digital wrapper for its online stories. The format will magically unearth journalistic misconduct and prevent anyone from using news in a way not pre-authorized by AP.

For example, the format preemptively warns people not to steal content, in case they were thinking about it.

It also provides the AP with an automated way to tell people when its stories are plagiarized, when the quotes are made up, and when a direct conflict of interest has been added to the story. How convenient and pracical! Here's how this will look, according to a promotional slideshow:

Finally, someone has invented a technology that allows plagiarists and cheats to confess their crimes in an automatic fashion. We predict this will work brilliantly, with no unforseen complications to inhibit its inevitable widespread use and adoption.

We've criticized the AP for knowing fuck all about the internet, blogging, and just generally relating to sentient human beings, but we have to hand it to the wire service: After changing how the world uses social media, embeds YouTube videos and sees Google, AP has done it again. We'll never look at AP news quite the same way.

(Top pic via)

The AP's Facebook and Twitter policies are less draconian than, say, Bloomberg's, but that's not saying much. They do sound, on the whole, reasonable, until you stop and ponder a few of the specifics.

For example, the organization says every comment on a staffer's Facebook profile should meet AP guidelines, because who can tell the difference between commenters and the original author??

It's a good idea to monitor your profile page to make sure material posted by others doesn't violate AP standards; any such material should be deleted.

And you, office supply assistant in the back! This applies to you too!

We cannot expect people outside the AP to know whether a posting on Facebook was made by someone who takes pictures, processes payroll checks or fixes satellite dishes.

Also, remember to distribute links fairly to the hundreds of members, and always be selling:

Link to member and customer sites instead and try to vary the links to spread the traffic around... It's a good idea to reference the AP in the promo language, i.e. Just how much geek can be chic? Test your fashion IQ with this interactive game (AP): http://bit.ly/BvAqv

Finally, no craven political posturing on social networks. That's what emails are for!

Memo below:

(Photo by Stephen Pruitt)

The photo, which shows the daughter of reformist politician Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani speaking at a rally for Mir Hossein Mousavi, was taken from IRIB, Iran's state-controlled television network. It went out this morning on the AP's photo wire, and can be used by any of the news collective's subscribers to illustrate stories on the unrest in Iran. Except the subscribers actually in Iran. No such luck for them. The image—along with several other shots taken from IRIB—bears the following restriction:

** IRAN OUT — EDITORIAL USE ONLY — NO ACCESS BBC PERSIAN TV SERVICE/NO ACCESS VOA PERSIAN TV ** EDITORS NOTE AS A RESULT OF AN OFFICIAL IRANIAN GOVERNMENT BAN ON FOREIGN MEDIA COVERING EVENTS IN IRAN, THE AP IS OBLIGED TO USE IMAGES FROM OFFICIAL SOURCES

What that means is that the AP will not permit any Iranian subscribers—in this case BBC Persian and the Voice of America's Persian-language service, both of which are trying to cover the unrest on their web sites and need images to do so—to use the picture. The reason, according to AP spokesman Jack Stokes, is restrictions imposed on the AP and other foreign news services by the Iranian regime.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser."It's based on permissions," Stokes told Gawker. "All photos have information about who can use them and who's out. This picture is not for use by the ones who should not be using them, because of our restrictions. They're out on that particular photo."

Stokes then referred us to AP executive editor Kathleen Carroll's statement—to an AP reporter—about the difficulties of working under press restrictions:

"Clearly, when our journalists can't go out and see things and talk to people, our ability to tell the story is not as good as when we are able to go out to report and take pictures and video," AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll said.

When controls are imposed, "we work with those restrictions, keeping in mind our ultimate goal is to be able to do our jobs as journalists," she said.

Except this isn't about whether AP reporters can go out an do their jobs on the streets of Tehran. It's about whether the AP will distribute information within Iran that the Iranian regime has asked it not to. And in this case, it won't. Granted, the images in question were already broadcast in Iran by state-controlled media, and presumably either the BBC or the VOA could lift their own images from the IRIB. But for the AP to refuse to allow the BBC or the Voice of America to pick them up and redistribute them aids and abets Ahmedinejad's efforts to maintain control over the story as it unfolds.

In the AP's defense, the situation in Iran is obviously dicey. The news organization's priorities are the safety of its people, and ensuring their continued presence in Iran so they can cover the story. Caving—or perhaps, given the chaos of the situation and its coverage, merely appearing to cave—into a demand about who can get some of its photos might be a small price to pay in order to stay in the game. And remains unclear exactly what the AP would do if an Iranian news service picked up one of the restricted images in violation of the rules. In the end, trying to cover authoritarian regimes always becomes a negotiation about what you're willing to give up in order to stay on the ground. But people ought to know about precisely what you've decided to give up, and what you've gotten in return.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Richtmyer made a head-slappingly obvious observation about the executives who turned AP member McClatchy Co. from a thriving newspaper chain into a sad penny stock (see chart, left). As quoted on Wired.com:

"It seems like the ones who orchestrated the whole mess should be losing their jobs or getting pushed into smaller quarters," Richtmyer wrote on May 28. "But they aren't."

One of Richtmyer 51 "friends" at the paranoid, insular newswire ratted him out to management for saying this very true thing, and now he's got an official reprimand for not constantly toadying up to every last AP member, no matter how vulgar. Meanwhile, Associated Press Chairman Dean Singleton continued yelling furiously (probably) that Google, one of AP's most successful clients, is a terrible corporation run by demons intent on sapping his company's precious bodily fluids. In this manner he modeled how one avoids expressing opinions that might compromise "AP's reputation as an unbiased source of news."

[Wired]

The morosely moribund newspaper industry is looking for a bailout. The government and Google are the only people with cash on hand these days; even superstar investor Warren Buffett, who owns stakes in the Post and the Buffalo News, says he won't put more money into the business.

A government handout to watchdog institutions is unseemly, so the papers are understandably targeting Google. Howard Kurtz reports in the Post that his employer is talking to Google about "improved ways of creating and presenting news online." Timesblogger Brian Stelter has Twittered that his bosses are doing the same.

Oh, so the newspapers want preening, self-important executives like Google VP Marissa Mayer to boss around their Web designers the way they do underlings at the Googleplex? Unlikely. They want cash, and soon.

It's sad that their writers are resorting to tactics they accuse bloggers of, like inventing facts out of whole cloth to serve their arguments. Take Times columnist Frank Rich, who insulted every non-newspaper journalist on the planet with this fabrication:

Just because information wants to be free on the Internet doesn't mean it can always be free. Web advertising will never be profitable enough to support ambitious news gathering. If a public that thinks nothing of spending money on texting or pornography doesn't foot the bill for such reportage, it won't happen.

Tell that to to CNET News, the tech news site which has won awards for its reporting. Or the citizen journalists of the Huffington Post, whose scoops shaped the last election. Or the experienced ink-stained wretches of Politico, some of whom worked not long ago at the Times and the Post. For that matter, the implication that journalism only happens when readers pay is nonsense. Look no further than the decades-old traditions of deep, original reporting found on radio and TV institutions like NPR and 60 Minutes, whose broadcasts come absolutely free of charge.

Kurtz, too, indulges in the occasional unreported fiction posing as fact:

Hanging over the talks is the reality that the search giant, while funneling vital traffic to news sites, vacuums up their content without paying a dime.

This "reality" is more of a collective delusion shared only by the newsrooms of America.

Then there are straight-out guilt trips: If Google doesn't pay for journalism, who will?

None of these tactics — begging, propaganda, guilt — seem to be working. That's because Googlers are smart, and they see that the newspapers have absolutely no leverage. We have a simple proposal for the executives of the Post and Times: Sue Google.

If they believe in their arguments, that Google is doing something improper with their content outside the bounds of fair use, then they should make their case in a court of law. Yes, they'll get brickbats from the blogosphere, but they're already losing in the court of opinion. And until there's a threat hanging over Google's head, there's absolutely no reason for them to open up their pocketbook.

It's a risky course. Google might respond with an alternative proposal: Instead of paying for the newspapers' headlines, why doesn't it charge them for the traffic it sends to their websites? There's ample precedent.

Larry Kramer, the newspaper executive who founded MarketWatch and now works as a venture capitalist, once told me a story about his company's dealings with Yahoo Finance. The stocks website was sending MarketWatch tons of free Web traffic through links on its site. MarketWatch executives were thrilled. But as it readied itself to go public, MarketWatch's investment bankers got nervous. What if Yahoo pulled the plug on the links? MarketWatch ended up signing a contract to pay Yahoo, in exchange for a guarantee.

Google has long resisted such pay-for-play links in its search results, segregating out commercial links as clearly marked ads. But the newspapers' whiny intransigence might test its morals. We'd like to see both sides put their money where their mouth is, and act to back up their stances — the newspapers, that content is worth paying for, and Google, that links have value. Better than this namby-pamby talk of talks.

No doubt, Edwards' adultery is officially Real News: After the National Enquirer last week reported the Democratic politician was under grand jury investigation for possible misuse of his presidential campaign funds, a major news organization actually started looking into the story instead of ignoring it, like last time. And what do you know: It turns out the supermarket tabloid was right. Again.

Edwards mistress Rielle Hunter produced videos for the politician's presidential campaign, and received more than $100,000 for her services. Since keeping a mistress is not an acceptable use of campaign money, there is an investigation into whether the payments were legit, the Associated Press confirmed.

In one case, Hunter received $14,000 from a political action committee the same day Edwards' presidential campaign paid the committee $14,000 for "furniture purchase," making it appear the money was — perhaps! — being laundered.

The numbers might sound boring, but the AP shows how a media feeding frenzy could soon unfold:

The two-time Democratic presidential candidate acknowledged Sunday that investigators are assessing how he spent his campaign funds — a subject that could carry his extramarital affair from the tabloids to the courtroom.

A trial would mean testimony, subpoenas, evidence and lord knows how many months of proceedings. John Edwards might somehow have a 2009 that's even worse than his 2008.

Think this will only work on gullible old ladies? Think again. We heard from a would-be-former News subscriber who is gainfully employed at a public relations agency.

That's right: even flacks, who take pride in bending newspapermen to their will, have trouble wriggling out of their News subscriptions.

Our tipster has tried calling, twice, but was put on hold for more than half an hour each time. She tried letters, of a sort, and even emailing the publisher and top editors. No dice. See her account below.

Perhaps the source of her headaches is obvious: the News is owned by Dean Singleton's MediaNews Group. Singleton, presently chairman of the Associated Press, just gave a speech saying he's "mad as hell" at those who would "walk off with our work" online. With that much anger at the top of the organization, maybe it was inevitable some non-customers in the offline world would get burned, as well.

A vice president in the AP's Chicago office sent WTNQ, a member of the AP, a cease-and-desist letter asking them to stop posting the AP's YouTube videos on its website. Frank Strovel, an employee at the AP-affiliated station, raised a fuss on Twitter, the world's best medium for complaints. That won him an interview with blogger Christian Grantham. Strovel explained that he called the AP executive who had sent the letter, a vice president of affiliate relations, and discovered he was unaware that the AP even had a YouTube channel.

Posting a video to YouTube requires the copyright holder to grant a license that allows anyone to embed the video on their website, unless one chooses to disable the embedding function. The AP has not done so — note the embed codes available on an AP report about Simpsons stamps, left.

Is this an example of what we're going to see from the AP as it attempts to pursue those who have "misappropriated" its content online, as Chairman Dean Singleton recently charged? If so, then the Internet is probably safe for a while, as the AP pursues its enemies within.

Update: AP flack Paul Colford sent this email:

There was a misunderstanding of YouTube usage when the Tennessee radio station was contacted by the Associated Press regarding the AP's more extensive online video services. No cease and desist letter was drafted or sent by AP to the station at any time. The AP was trying to offer the station a superior service for their needs.

It appears that the AP did not send a formal cease-and-desist letter. But it certainly demanded that WTNQ take down the AP's YouTube videos. And it hardly offered "superior service." On his blog, Strovel published an excerpt from the email he received from the AP executive:

I noticed you are posting our video content with out a license and have to ask you to remove the AP video content from the site ASAP. If you would like to know more about our web services please contact me.