Associated Press Regional Teams

(Chicago, Illinois) The AP has announced the creation of regional investigative teams to provide resources to reporters around the nation. Senior Managing Editor Mike Oreskes sent a memo. Here's part.

In today's world of tweets and sound bites, it's easy to lose sight of journalism's essential role in holding governments and institutions accountable.

In fact, investigative journalism has never been more important or more vital than it is today, a fact repeatedly driven home by the attention and play generated by our best AP Impact enterprise. All of our studies of how our content is used--and this includes text and video and interactives and photos--show that there is a hunger for the exclusive. A desire for news we break!

Today, AP is making a significant commitment to this kind of journalism by creating four regional investigative teams to complement our existing national and Washington based investigative reporting operations. These teams, tapping some of AP's best reporters and editors, will serve as a resource for AP journalists across the country, an engine for producing ground-breaking, exclusive journalism that is important to millions.

The memo continues with a call for all employees to show AP team spirit toward the new regional efforts while specifying that the goal is to do "more of what we are already doing."

Interesting. I'm no expert but it appears that the AP is shaking up its whole operation to address dramatic changes in news reporting caused by the Internet. Either that or the AP managers are feeling budget pressure, like everyone else in the current economic recession, and they want to encourage people to quit by sending them into the boondocks.

Also possible is that the AP is pushing Washington staffers into the hinterlands because they ran out of interesting and important news to report in the nation's capital. Given that Washington is an investigative news candy store, it's ludicrous to think that there are not enough stories worth following. But, we are talking about the AP, right? Liberal administration, liberal town, liberal AP means "No stories here, boss."

Lastly, regarding a statement in Oreskes' memo, "it's easy to lose sight of journalism's essential role in holding governments and institutions accountable," I'd like to congratulate the AP for succeeding. Easy or otherwise, mission accomplished, arguably years ago.