I really admire your willingness to go the extra mile with such an archaic 19th century industry organization. It never surprises me when a behemoth of business crosses over into the realm of total arrogance.

My latest concerns with the print news industry as a whole got a lot more intense this past week when President Obama came out in favor of at least considering a news industry bailout.

Of course, he said they’d have to become nonprofits if they want a gov’t handout, which is a superb requirement, because that won’t ever happen in our lifetime.

Bottom line though is that it’s really all about how willing intransigent parties are to let go of that greed based grip so they can actually learn how to make a reasonable and realistic profit. But that would require an actual open dialogue with the likes of Danny Sullivan…

Media commentators fear for the future of investigative journalism. “How can we hold governments’ feet to the fire without money to pay our great reporters? Where would you get your recycled wire feeds, your Garfield cartoons?”

Publishers hold that it is natural for readers to pay what advertisers once did, just as cows have to make up the difference out of their own pockets when the price of milk falls. “Without the AP, journalism would not exist! Just as without pimps, sex would never have been invented.”

Newspapers have suffered badly since the collapse of their previous business model of selling readers to advertisers on a local monopoly basis. The replacement models appear to involve phlogiston, caloric and luminiferous aether.

Publishers have also explored the notion of getting Google to pay its “fair share” for so parasitically leading people to newspapers’ websites. The Wikimedia Foundation promptly started billing journalists for their reprints from Wikipedia. “We feel this is completely unfair,” said Tom Curley of the Associated Press, “as real news stories spring forth from the heads of accredited reporters in an immaculate creation from nothingness. My preciousss.” Maurice Jarre was unavailable for comment.

I hate to sound like a kid but they’re just so stupid, it makes me want to see them dead now rather than later.

But I guess we’ll have to watch them die the death of a thousand cuts.

Hopefully that will hurt a lot!

One day they will wake up and realize that they have alienated Internet users, their one viable market in the future.

So, let’s leave all behind now–it’s really inconsequential. For the AP to simply say, “we’re done” giving interviews is beyond the pale. How many of their editors would allow AP reporters to say, “well, boss, I couldn’t get the interview because, well, they said, ‘they’re done.’” No AP reporter I know would accept such a bullshit answer and I’m pleased to see you haven’t either.

I’m in your corner on this.

Back in May, when they AP was raising issues about its relations with Google, I asked several times to speak with someone at the AP about this.

Google and search engines are my beat. I have covered them for years, longer than any other journalist I know. That’s one reason why other journalists, including the AP’s own reporters, have long used me as a source for their stories.

I have an extensive reach among those who care about all matters of search. Despite this, no AP execs were available. None. They were done talking about these matters, I was told.

Skip forward to this month, and they’re talking again. The AP doesn’t reach out to me, as it clearly did with other publications. OK — I’ll reach out to them once again. And I did on July 23. No answer. None. Not a “we’re done talking to the press.” Not a “we don’t want to talk to you in particular.” Nothing.

Yesterday, I reached out to two separate AP executives including Jane Seagrave who has been commenting. No answer.

Today, I tried again, new route — this time an actual phone call back to Paul, who apparently ignored my email of July 23 and, I can only assume, the forwarded emails he probably got from the two AP execs I emailed. And this time, it’s the “we’re done talking thing.”

Yes, I’ve been trying to do my legwork in talking to them, over and above, I’d say. It’s not that they don’t have time to talk to me or others on these topics. It’s that they’ve said all they want to say at this point, especially because when you get into the technical details, they don’t seem to have all the answers together. And that’s very worrying from an organization that’s supposed to be out there on behalf of its member publications trying to bring forward a new era and future for journalism.

The AP doesn’t have to talk to me. They’re within their rights not to, and I can totally understand that they might feel it’s not productive — that I have an agenda — that I’m not worth the time, etc. But then say that, not this “we’re done” talking spin.

I’m definitely trying not to be lazy. I’ve tried repeatedly to talk to the AP, to get the full story. They don’t want to talk to me, as best I can tell, and are using “we’ve talked enough” as an excuse. My view.