AP Names Atlanta its First Regional Editing Hub

By: Joe Strupp Atlanta will be the first of four regional editing hubs to be established the Associated Press, Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll said Friday. The remaining three, where all editing functions for multiple states will be done, have yet to be named.

AP recently announced its plan to regionalize editing operations in four hub cities representing bureaus in the South, East, West, and Central regions.

Atlanta will be the southern hub, taking content from 13 states and Washington, D.C. Those states are: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware.

"We are trying to get a reasonably like-sized set of four," Carroll told E&P about the breakdown of states for each hub. "The south is a lot easier to do. But when you get on the shoulders of some of the regions, it gets difficult."

Carroll said the regionalizing is an effort to consolidate editing operations so that content flows through the process more quickly and some staffers can be transferred to non-editing positions. "It will be moving work around, not necessarily people," she explained.

When asked if the regionalizing will mean fewer editing eyes on content, Carroll said, "There will be plenty of the right kinds of eyes." She cited an internal study last summer that found some AP content is reviewed by as many as 45 people.

"We are not talking about diminishing the quality of editing, but getting staffers out of the relaying content business and into the newsgathering business," she said. "It will help us put more reporting resources in bureaus. This is not a cost-saving measure."

Under AP's longstanding procedure, copy from each state is edited through its state bureau and sent from there. Under the new approach, each state will keep its news editor, but send content through its regional hub for editing. "This gives [each bureau] someone to work with close to their state," Carroll said.

AP has a similar regionalized editing system for its 100 foreign bureaus, with three hubs handling copy in London, Bangkok and Mexico City.

Carroll expects the Atlanta hub to begin operations by early 2008, with plans to name the next hub in the second quarter of next year. The remaining hubs are not likely to be named until 2009.

The breakdown of states for other hubs are:

* CENTRAL: Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Wisconsin (14 states).

* EAST: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont (10 states).

* WEST: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming (13 states).