The Good Old AP Does It Again

My Bnet Media colleague Cathy Taylor cracked me up earlier today, with her observation that the Associated Press has priced its mobile version of the storied AP Stylebook at more than twice what the paper version costs on Amazon.

Good luck on selling that one, AP.

Even better was Cathy's email to me a bit later. The subject line said it all: "Fwd: AP Stylebook is now following you on Twitter!"

Sounds like a possible stalking case to me. But seriously, what is going on with the AP this year? Have the people running the wire service gone completely insane?

As one who has spent many of the past 40 years ensuring that the editorial standards wherever I was working remained at the highest level possible, I have to say that the AP Stylebook never very useful to me. It is hardly a work of genius, when it comes to matters of grammar and usage.

For a work of genius you need look no further than William Strunk, Jr., and E.B. White's The Elements of Style. Now that would be a mobile app worth paying for.

David Weir

David Weir is a veteran journalist who has worked at Rolling Stone, California, Mother Jones, Business 2.0, SunDance, the Stanford Social Innovation Review, MyWire, 7x7, and the Center for Investigative Reporting, which he cofounded in 1977. He’s also been a content executive at KQED, Wired Digital, Salon.com, and Excite@Home. David has published hundreds of articles and three books,including "Raising Hell: How the Center for Investigative Reporting Gets Its Story," and has been teaching journalism for more than 20 years at U.C. Berkeley, San Francisco State University, and Stanford.

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