Apple Inc. spent decades building a cult-like following in the education sector. From grade school, through college and into professional life, young people around the world feel a kinship with the company’s Macbooks, iPhones and iPads.

They also rally behind social responsibility causes far faster, and with more commitment, than older adults. Which is why Apple is playing with fire by not immediately and convincingly speaking with kids about the disturbing allegations in a New York Times article last week about sweatshop-like conditions at manufacturing facilities that make Apple products in China.

Granted, many middle schoolers do not read The New York Times. We still receive a hard copy at the house every day, but it wasn’t until my youngest daughter, Libby, 13, got to school Thursday that she heard about the Apple article — during a gathering of Model UN.

Thursday was the day Apple got knocked off a pedestal for Libby, who wrote the letter below and posted it on her blog. Today, she started asking me whether it was time to sell our Apple stock. All this from an eighth grader.

Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote an email to staff about the Times piece.  In the letter, a copy of which was reprinted by 9to5mac.com, the new chief executive said Apple cares about all of its employees and those involved in the supply chain.  He pointed to the Supplier Responsibility page on Apple’s web site for details on what’s happening in China and other places where Apple products are made.

It’s going to be hard work to get that message to every school kid using Apple products.

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From the “Being a Student in NYC” blog of Libby Armon, 13:

I sent a letter to Apple expressing my deep dislike for their factory in China. The letter is displayed below:

Dear Apple,

Have you ever considered having your Apple factory in the United States rather than in China?

If you relocated your factory to the US you would help create tons of jobs for Americans in a time where jobs are hard to find. Yes you would have to pay higher wages. However, I think that Apple would be benefited by the increase in respect that you would earn by relocating.

I thought that you not only designed your products in California but made them there too. In Model UN our teacher had us talk to Siri and ask her where she was manufactured or put together. Siri responded that she could not tell us and that the information we wanted was classified.

We then watched the film by the New York Times, “Made in China.” This video explained how Apple makes its products in China in a sweatshop. I know you think that it is okay to use this cheep labor because other companies might, but it isn’t.

People who buy your products do not want to know where they are getting their electronics because they know they will feel guilty. It seems your company feels shame also because you have Siri cover up for you. If you feel bad then maybe you should do the right thing and move your factory somewhere where you aren’t taking advantage of someone else.

Yes, I know you can do what you want and that Apple is more powerful than me but I can only hope you help improve your company morally. I am writing on an Apple computer right now, this shows how I do admire your craftsmanship with your products. Apple has been a key factor in positively connecting our global society. All I ask from Apple now is that you relocate your factory!

Sincerely,

Libby Armon

I grew up in one of the seemingly small number of Rochester families without a relative employed by Kodak.

But that doesn’t mean the once-mighty photographic empire didn’t touch my life. Kodak’s expected bankruptcy filing conjured up memories of sight, sound and even smell.

Anyone who lived in western New York in the 1970s and ‘80s likely remembers the spike in print and broadcast automobile advertising in March when the more than 50,000 Kodak workers cashed their annual “Kodak Bonus” check. The jingle “Piehler, Piehler, the Pontiac Dealer” still echoes in my brain.

Unfortunately, the stench of Kodak wasn’t nearly as pleasant as the Piehler jingle. Smokestacks near Kodak Park spewed acrid plumes and rained gritty particulate onto cars parked downwind.

As a teenage ice cream truck driver, I’d leave my car parked near the Lake and Ridgeway Skippy Ice Cream depot for long periods. The “Kodak rain” prompted plenty of pollution conspiracy theories – and hose downs of our cars. Around that same period, high levels of carcinogenic chemicals were detected in the ground water on nearby Rand Street.

One thing Kodak did very well – in addition to manufacturing film, batteries, copy machines and, more recently, inkjet printers — was generating news.

As the Rochester reporter for UPI, I was on the receiving end of many press releases produced by Kodak’s formidable media relations operation and blue chip PR firms like Hill & Knowlton. While most of the “news” was far from time-sensitive, Kodak’s quarterly earnings announcements were of critical importance.

Because Kodak was a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and other key indexes in those days, the financial newswires like Dow Jones and Reuters routinely issued a headline within seconds of the NYSE:EK release crossing PR Newswire or Business Wire.

But the secretary in Kodak’s PR department openly complained about lengthy service delays at the commercial newswires. Her solution to make sure market-moving news was quickly delivered to the Democrat & Chronicle, Times-Union and Rochester TV and radio stations was to assemble a line-up of taxicabs outside Kodak Office on State Street.

So that’s where I stood on the mornings Kodak issued its earnings. As Joan Miller delivered envelopes to the cabbies, I ran with the press release to a bank of pay phones at Kodak headquarters and called in the earnings numbers to UPI’s financial editor, Dottie Brooks.  By 1985, I was using my first laptop computer — a Radio Shack TRS80 Model 100, complete with an acoustic cup modem — to write Kodak earnings stories.  

Beating AP, Dow Jones and Reuters consistently on breaking news from Kodak was an obsession.

A defining moment in my relationship with Kodak came after a federal judge ruled that Kodak had infringed Polaroid’s patents in the creation of a Kodak instant camera. My editor at UPI, Steve Geimann, jazzed up the headline: “Kodak Convicted of Stealing Polaroid Trade Secrets.” The comms guy at Kodak, Charlie Smith, went too far in expressing his displeasure over the headline. A bridge was burned.

From that day on, I shot Fuji film.

John MacLeod Williams, who led PR Newswire through tremendous sales growth in the 1990s and successfully extended the paid press release business model into China in recent years, died suddenly Tuesday in Chicago.  He was 66.

John, an avid boxer and exercise buff, had been working out when he collapsed, said his wife, Donna Manke Williams, who on Thanksgiving had not yet finalized funeral arrangements.  He and Donna lived in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and also owned a home in Granville, Vermont.

Facebook tributes to John from current and past PR Newswire employees poured in this morning within minutes of a posting about his death. Many highlighted his inspirational leadership style and outsize personality.

“He was an Alpha Male for sure. He took a bite out of life and let the juices run down his chin. I’m sure he packed more living in those 66 years than most do in a hundred,” wrote Jeff McHugh, a software engineer who worked in PRN’s Philadelphia bureau.

John joined PR Newswire in 1986 from Business Wire, where he helped establish a New York office for the rapidly growing San Francisco-based company.  At PR Newswire, which had pioneered the commercial press release distribution industry in 1954, John set about creating a culture of sales, service and product innovation.

He emphasized media relations, understanding that unless reporters and editors used the content they received from PR Newswire, sales would founder.  Dorthea Brooks, a legendary business editor for United Press International, was recruited.  John also hired former Unipressers Jerry Mitchell, Tom Madden, Fred Ferguson, Neil Hershberg and me.

From 1989 to 2008, John was a constant source of inspiration — and occasional irritation — as he continually questioned the status quo, demanded better performance from the finance and technology departments at PRN, and took jabs at British parent company United Business Media their laser focus on profits over investing for long-term success.

In addition to accelerating PRN’s growth through broadcast fax and fax-on-demand products, John added theatrical touches that at times proved hilarious.

At a sales conference in the early 1990s, he donned a Fruit of the Loom grape costume. At another, he tried to recruit Mr. T to promote the launch of an early Internet “T Button” that allowed interactivity on press releases.  During the inaugural PRN “President’s Club,” John chartered deep-sea fishing boats and arranged for a private helicopter tour for the elderly father of one sales exec.

In 2002 John volunteered to expand the commercial newswire business model to China, where a relationship with Xinhua News Agency gave credibility to PRN and allowed it to thrive.  During one of my last business trips with John, he bore wounds familiar to many Beijing locals — injuries suffered in a bicycle crash.  He kept his bike in the kitchen of his apartment.

Fitness was at the center of Williams’s life since he stopped drinking in 1989.  A fixture at a swimming pool near PR Newswire’s former headquarters near Times Square, Williams also boxed.  It was not uncommon for a young, fit PR Newswire employee to arrive in the office with a broken nose or a black eye, trophies of a boxing session with the boss.  When we discussed partnering with AudioNet, the event streaming business started by Mark Cuban in 1995, the deal was sealed when John hopped into the ring with Cuban’s female biz dev executive, Julie Smith.

Outside the ring, John took delight sharing his fortunes with others.  When he built a home in rural Vermont, he invited PR Newswire employees for camping weekends, drawing into the woods some nervous visitors who had never before left the five boroughs.  In a very private case of philanthropy, John met a quadriplegic man in the same rehabilitation facility treating his  father.  John donated a computer equipped with a head visor that allowed his new friend — a former author and academic –  to move the cursor with puffs of breath, freeing him to communicate via email.

Born near Buffalo, in Dunkirk, N.Y., John M. Williams grew up in the newspaper business.  His great grandfather founded the local daily, The Observer, in 1882, where John’s father MacLeod was editor.  John earned a degree at Syracuse University, enlisted in the Air Force and served two tours in Vietnam.

His career at UPI involved assignments in New York and Los Angeles, where he covered the murder trial of Charles Manson. He never stopped playing copy editor at PRN, alerting staffers to grammar and spelling mistakes and insisting on prose that would impress our two key audiences — PR professionals and journalists.

In addition to his wife, John is survived by two sisters, Julia MacLeod Williams of Richmond and Sarah Williams McCrane of Poquoson, Va.

John meant a great deal to me and hundreds of people who worked with him through 30+ years in the newswire business.  Rest in peace, John.

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From the Cartmell Funeral Home (link)

The funeral service for John Williams will take place on Sunday at 5:30 p.m. at the Cartmell Funeral Home, 150 Court St., Plymouth. Friends and relatives are welcome to the visitation at Cartmell Funeral Home on Sunday from 3:00 to 5:30 pm. Cremation will take place at Vine Hills Crematory, Plymouth.

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I attended John’s funeral yesterday in Plymouth.  Other PR Newswire people paying respects included Charlie Morin, Jerry Mitchell, Todd Grossman, Larry Thomas, Dave Haapaoja, Mark Nowlan, Mary Salzillo Levine, Heather Schwanke and Michelle Beaudreau.  Donna appreciated the show of support for John’s work at PR Newswire.

Don’t let the mustard-colored sports coat fool you.  Tom Kunz is one hip CEO.

As head of Cenury 21 Real Estate LLC, Kunz is in an industry that’s being disintermediated by the Internet      and ravaged by the recession.  Yet I have never met a more positive, open-minded and technology-friendly executive.

What does he do right:

• He’s not afraid to experiment. Century 21 pulled its TV advertising budget and spent the cash to bolster its presence online. Kunz says brand recognition for the franchise was already in the high 90s, so there was no reason to spend millions on 30- and 60-second image spots.  The company is contemplating a switch back to TV, but it would be a web-based format where Century 21 branding was visible at all times on the screen.

• He understands the time-sensitive nature of news. When Congress extended incentives aimed at first-time homebuyers, Kunz dropped what he was doing to record a 2 minute presentation on a tiny, inexpensive Flip video camera. His comments were up on Century 21’s YouTube channel within minutes.  As of today, the video had been watched nearly 1,700 times.
• He takes counsel from Matt Gentile, Century’s 21’s director of corporate and brand communications. In an interview with PR Week’s Eric Iacono, during the Next conference, Kunz talked about making media outreach in local markets a priority.  By incorporating interviews with local print and broadcast media into trips, and inviting local Century 21 franchisees to participate, the organization lands extended coverage rather than the short soundbites afforded by national media.
• He doesn’t hoard good information. While many CEOs would stay silent about marketing strategies, Kunz is a walking dictionary definition for transparency, even sharing his age (61) with the crowd.  As for naysayers, he advises them to watch the AT&T  “Lost Dog” YouTube spot to explain power of social media.

I also liked Tom’s ability to be self-effacing in a manner that seemed genuine:  “I’m a gadget freak,” he told those attending the Next event at the Waldorf Astoria. “It doesn’t mean I know how to use them all, but I buy them all.”

Tom was kind enough to do a short interview with me following his appearance at Next. Please excuse my camera work, as his head is halfway out of the frame for portions of the video.  Yet another reason I never worked in TV.

Zillow just scored a nice Wall Street Journal hit, along with 300+ references in Google News, for its inaugural “Trick-or-Treat Housing Index.”  Timing of its October 26 blog post was excellent, with ample time to spread virally before Halloween.

The premise was to look for the most affluent and safe neighborhoods where the houses are closest together, reasoning that’s where costumed kids could haul the most candy with the least amount of walking.  It’s great branding for the Seattle-based online real estate resource, which promises to spread the index beyond its hometown next year. (Childhood obescity experts will undoubtedly position themselves for the counter attack.)

When I was a kid in Rochester, New York, the Rapp family was the local Canada Dry soda distributor.  They handed out cans of pop to kids in the tony Browncroft neighborhood on Halloween.  (One of the kids, C.J. Rapp, grew up to invent Jolt cola.)

This Saturday night, kids everywhere will readily share Halloween strategies that are not dissimilar to Zillow’s methodology.  But no matter how many Saf-T-Pops, Mary Janes or miniature Snicker bars are proffered, the real prize on Halloween will be figuring out which houses are doling out full-sized candy bars, whole packs of gum  or other top-shelf goodies.

A marketing and PR coup would be a branded mobile app that used GPS and crowd sourcing for strategic trick-or-treating.   Lord knows it’s possible.  Garmin makes GPS navigators capable of displaying known police speed traps, and FourSquare tells me which nearby bar is giving the first glass of wine away for free.

Those who say this could ruin Halloween should look at the benefits before passing judgment:  Kids with peanut allergies could tag houses handing out Skittles.  Vegetarian kids could avoid the Skittles (which contain gelatin).  Dentist homeowners could opt in to author their own “No Candy Here” disclaimer to lessen the chances of getting TP’d for giving away pencils and tooth-shaped erasers.

I’m going to stop now and write my CandySniffer app business plan.  Anyone know which VC funded Webkinz?

Photo credit: amykclark via Photobucket

The media execs attending lunch at the Paley Center for Media Tuesday seemed relieved that they could take a break from watching their P&L’s get jackhammered by scrappy new entrants with tiny cost structures.

Not that the topic of conversation at this week’s schmoozefest, “The Great Digital Debate: Free vs. Paid Content,” was much of a diversion.

The biggest guffaws came when media futurist Shelly Palmer likened the media industry’s focus on free-versus-paid content to worrying about what song the band was playing aboard the Titanic.

The CEO of National Public Radio, Vivian Schiller, sounded a shrill warning for news organizations who might be tempted to begin charging for their content on the Internet.

While acknowledging the difference between NPR’s charter, which prohibits charging for content, and commercial journalism, Schiller said pay walls demonstrated “elitistm” and threatened to alienate the very audiences with which media organizations should be engaging.

Steve Brill, the founder of American Lawyer and CourtTV, now runs Journalism Online. He dismissed criticism of his latest company’s business goal — to provide publishers with mechanisms through which they can charge for content.

Brill asserted that no news organizations have been able to survive on advertising alone, saying that publishers have always had to balance circulation revenue with advertising and other factors to arrive at the right mix.  One example he gave was the free magazines provided to passengers on the Delta Shuttle, on which hundreds of thousands of well-heeled business passenger have flown for years.  While readership could easily be puffed up through such giveaway programs, there was a price to pay on the subscription side of the business.

Commodity content — weather, lottery numbers and roughly 90% of the material most news organizations present on their web sites — would not be good candidates for subscriptions, cautioned Brill.  The other 10% could command a fee, and Brill claimed to have received 1,200 inquiries from “affiliates” eager to begin charging.

A video of the entire discussion was added today to the Paley Center website.

We’ve all heard how Orson Welles made his radio theater production of “War of the Worlds” so realistic that it panicked among many listeners who honestly thought earth had been invaded by Martians.

True masters of radio broadcasting understand how to dazzle – how to describe a scene and then deliver the goods in a way that is more personal and vivid than film or video.

One such person was Stacie Hunt, who concocted a phony Woodstock-sized outdoor rock concert festival that was simulcast over an ad

hoc network of mainly FM stations in the 1970s, years ahead of MTV. Such care was taken to make the concert marathon sound authentic that the on-scene deejays described food, rockers’ clothes and even the weather. I swore at the time that I could smell pot smoke coming from my stereo’s speakers.

It was that ability to suspend reality in the process of promoting something – in this case, a bunch of rock bands and the advertisers who paid for spots during the concert – that made the company started by Stacie and her business partner, former Entertainment Tonight director Sally Jewett, such a success.

On the Scene Productions (OTSP), along with Medialink and several competitors, benefited from the Reagan-era decision to allow the use of satellites for commercial use rather than just military, government and academic communications.  PR professionals instantly welcomed video news releases, satellite media tours and other electronic publicity tools as a way of telling their story to TV and radio listeners.

The era is quickly ending.

PR Week’s Tonya Garcia broke the story yesterday that OTSP, which had been sold to the investment firm Socious Capital, had furloughed its employees and faced bankruptcy.  That followed by one week the approval of a deal that merged the formerly formidable Medialink into the tiny, VC-backed digital video warehousing company TheNewsMarket.

It’s ironic that government deregulation gave birth to an industry that has withered largely because of a misguided Federal Communications Commission decision to blame VNR producers and their customers for sloppy newsroom practices at TV stations.

For those who haven’t followed the issue, there were a number of highly publicized instances of corporate- and government-handout video being aired by TV stations that did not attribute its source.  At least one station was fined and the industry collapse began.

The loss of pillars of the electronic PR service sector is certainly unfortunate for the employees and investors. But mourning is done best while recalling the unique and wonderful attributes of the deceased.  In the case of OTSP, I am convinced that many of today’s experts in digital communications have been inspired by the company’s professionalism and creativity.  They will remain “on the scene” for years to come.

The whole concept of a sabbatical is foreign to those of us who haven’t worked in academia. For someone who bought his first police scanner at age 14 and who has measured time in news cycles ever since, taking a pause to refresh was heresy.

Yet I found myself on “garden leave” – the term the British use to describe the time a departing executive is dormant before getting back to work –for much of 2009. The irony is that the only thing resembling a garden at our New York condo is a window box. Despite the lack of a plot to plant, I can honestly say the last few months have been exhilarating.

While I thought my work-life balance was in check before, now I actually know my daughters’ shoe sizes and the menu at the soup kitchen where my wife, Maureen, cooks gourmet meals three days a week. I also experienced the joy of mentoring two recent City University graduates, and helping low-income women gain self-sufficiency through a highly effective program called First Step.

On the networking front, I have been awed by all the brilliant entrepreneurs who are introducing fascinating and disruptive ways to do tasks that have long confounded marketing and PR pros. In private equity and venture capital, I have new respect for the discipline and guts it takes to find, fund and execute. And on the customer desktop, I share your pain that it’s possible to order a pizza through your Tivo but automating a MarCom department remains but a dream.

Today, as I prepare to begin a new chapter as a board member and vice chairman of dna13, I want to thank the many friends, peers and complete strangers who embodied the very spirit of social networking by brainstorming, opening their Rolodexes and challenging my preconceived notions about how PR, media, marketing and sales are intersecting, and the role that technology will play in that convergence.

Most people have never heard of dna13. Compared to an entrenched giant like PR Newswire, this Ottawa-based software company is very, very small. Yet dna13 is a wonderful example of how someone who’s an expert in his job – dna13 founder Chris Johnson worked in corporate communications for Bell Canada – can bring a fresh solution to market and watch it grow.

What does dna13 do? In short, users of dna13 software can listen to what is being said about their company across all channels — print, major market TV, online and social media. When the SM (social media) or MSM (mainstream media) hits the fan, the dna13 platform has cool permissioning features so subscribers can securely align team members to plan the synchronized delivery of messages. (Note: those who love managing their 500+ Google Alerts, emailing multiple “track changes” documents to their CEO, or plugging their good, bad and neutral hits into a spreadsheet should not look at dna13.)

dna13 is moving from entrepreneurial to growth phase. Because it’s set up in the Software-as-a-Service model, product development is nimble. I have never seen a better technology organization – moving from white board to production in days and weeks rather than months and years.

My new colleagues include seasoned sales, marketing and product people, super-capable COO Kevin O’Neil, as well as board support from software veteran Howard Gwin (PeopleSoft, IBM, Pivotal), Tom Birch of Propulsion Ventures, Inc. and Pierre-Andre Meunier of Celtic House Venture Partners.

To all those who invited me into their homes, offices, industry events and social networks during my transition, please know that I’m happy to repay the favor. Just say the word.

Chocolate’s in the news today.  If Cadbury is gobbled up by Kraft — or Hershey or Nestle for that matter — how would that impact you or your clients?

With gold surpassing the psychological barrier of $1,000 an ounce, eBay reported 14k gold was the “biggest mover” today.   Not surprising, similar action is being seen on Craigslist. Investment advisors and consumer protection agencies should be having a field day.

The United Nations General Assembly is preparing to meet in New York September 15.  If your organization is gathering at the same time, can you draw parallels and attract attention?  Or maybe you have some wonderful gridlock-busting technology you should be showcasing in Manhattan during the mayhem.

Look out Conference Board, The Economist claims its Big Mac Index is an accurate financial indicator?  If you represent a global product or brand (and don’t mind calling attention to market-by-market pricing), challenge the sandwich to a duel.

Friday marks eight years since the attacks by al-Qaeda on New York and Washington. Is there a tasteful angle that points to ways you or your clients are dealing with the memory of the attacks, helping the families of victims or contributing to a safer world?

Red hot on Twitter over the past 48 hours are thousands of postings under the heading “When I was little, I…” Does this data reveal anything useful? Any emblematic kids’ products or insightful parenting authors want to jump on the bandwagon?

September is when thousands of green interns arrive at PR agencies to make a substantive contribution.  Too often, they are told to organize messy stacks of magazines and newspapers or validate media lists — anything to keep them from jeopardizing actual client work.

If you feel like trying something new — even beyond monitoring calls for help via ProfNet and HARO –  challenge your interns to establish a real-time assignment desk of sorts?  Have them monitor what’s happening right now, not events that occurred last month, last week or even during yesterday’s news cycle.

Very few agencies look at early social media indicators to predict what stories will spill over into mainstream media in the coming days or weeks.  Those who do often look only for specific keywords, like their clients’ and competitors’ brands, personnel and hot issues rather than taking a blue-sky approach that invites more creative connections to less obvious events and topics sure to command media attention.

By training the interns — and potentially a more experienced in-house staff of  “war room” news hounds — to use readily available, free Web resources, they can surface trending topics and match them against issues your clients are facing.  Account supervisors and management could hold a huddle each morning or afternoon to review what the interns have discovered.

Key to making this work is understanding the type of expertise you can offer influential bloggers and media covering a given story.  Are there experts within your client’s organization who could be interviewed? Do you have b-roll or digital photos to illustrate a point?  Is there any current research that could be summarized and distributed?

Any smart PR agency pro knows that this kind of approach could backfire if an ill-prepared client expert is powdered up for hastily prepared CNBC interview only to bomb on-camera.  Advance media training and content development are key. So is production and digital warehousing of media assets that can serve as sidebar material to amplify the points you’ll make in writing and on-camera.

Many of us continue operating as though year-old editorial calendars, quarterly account reviews and weekly client-agency conference calls are adequate to maximize opportunities — and minimize risk  — in a new generation where user-generated content contributes to a more fluid and often volatile online presentation of hot topics and news.

The new crop of interns might just teach us all something if given the chance.

Most Americans associate summer’s three-day bank holidays with barbecues, trips to the beach and  family vacations.

I think of corpses.

Not that I am morbid or have a desire to work as an undertaker.  I simply had a recurring assignment early in my journalistic career to keep track of fatal car accidents on New York state highways each Memorial Day, Independence Day and Labor Day weekend.  And I had fun doing it.

Working out of United Press International bureaus in Rochester and Buffalo in the 1980s, I was the only staffer on duty  between New York City and Cleveland Sunday mornings.  My task was to scan newspapers and check in with UPI’s stringer network — friendly news people at local TV and radio stations  across the Empire State — for the day’s top stories.   UPI paid $40 per story, though the company’s numerous bankrupcty filings made the promise of receiving a non-rubber stringer check a running joke.

On the long  holiday weekends, UPI’s state and national wires  kept a tally of the number of people killed in auto wrecks.  We called this the CAX count, an acronym that meant something like car accidents or casualties.   The National Safety Council, an advocate for seatbelt use, would make a prediction about how many unfortunate drivers, passengers and pedestrians would expire between midnight Friday and the end of travel period on Monday.

Vincent Toffany, who headed the safety council, understood that the news cycle was typically very slow on these weekends.  His organization received branding and reinforcement of their messaging.  The American Automobile Association used this release-news-when-it’s dead approach, too, as did gasoline price survey author Trilby Lundberg.

What used to infuriate UPI’s archrival, The Associated Press, is when our prowess on the telephones with state police or stringers would yield an extra victim or two.  In some cases, UPI would be a tad liberal by counting a drunk who died by falling off a highway overpass or the victim of a pre-holiday crash who succumbed after the clock struck midnight.  AP usually relied on “electronic carbon” stories from its member newspapers, which meant AP broadcast subscribers in New York got late, stale news.

In any event, the UPI totals got a helluva lot more airtime and print coverage because I had a higher CAX count every time.

With UPI a shell of its old self — it’s now owned by Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church and its News World Corporation, publisher of the Washington Times — and Reuters and Bloomberg doing a nice job with international and business news, there’s little traditional wire service competition for AP in the United States.  But demand for content among local print and broadcast outlets is down, too, as they lose audience and advertisers to an increasingly fragmented online media landscape.

The Associated Press still makes a significant amount of money off its 50 state reports, thanks to correspondents covering legislative news in statehouse bureaus and a policy not to display the content online, where it could be pirated.  But a reduction in the size of AP’s editorial staff and similar news cutbacks among media outlets that used to feed items to AP, has left huge holes in coverage.

What’s filling the gap? Regional newspapers are banding together to form cooperatives that may make even AP state reports unnecessary in the years ahead.  The Ohio News Organization is one such effort.   Politico also represents a significant threat, as it readily barters editorial coverage of Washington news for advertising inventory in local media outlets and web sites.

There are also some dark horses in coverage of the nuts-and-bolts local news.  Atlanta-based CNN has its own editorial staff plus a large network of domestic radio and television affiliates that both broadcast content from and contribute news to CNN.  The so-called CNN Wire has not yet become a comprehensive state-level news service, but it could.

Not surprisingly, newcomers without legacy business hindrances seem to be doing a fine job breaking news locally and globally.   The micro-local Watertown, NY, site Newzjunky is kicking the digital ass of the century-old Watertown Daily Times and making money by selling advertising.

Twitter is the no-cost platform through which the Dutch news service Breaking News Online reaches the majority of its 1.1 million followers, though it is also emailing and using RSS.  In a short time, BNO has gone from solely aggregating third-party news content in under 140 characters to a growing amount of original reporting.  While there’s no apparent revenue model, it wouldn’t surprise me to see local, state, national and vertical beats pop up under the BNO brand as consumers get hooked on digesting tweets and SMS headlines.

The word “wire” is less about a strand of copper these days.  I think of it as an acronym — World Instantly Reached Electronically — and relish the fact that so many content producers are joining in the fun.