A contract stalemate between news company Reuters and the Australian Associated Press is set to see stories pulled from Australian newspapers within the next two weeks.
Reuters plans to abandon its agreement for exclusive distribution with AAP, and wants to pursue individual deals with publishers such as News Ltd and Fairfax Media.
The arguments are mainly over money. Reuters has been paid $600,000 a year to use a limited selection of stories by AAP, but wants to increase that fee by 117% in the first year of a five-year agreement.
Joachim Schmaltz, Reuters’ vice-president in Asia, told The Age: “With full control over the end-to-end delivery process across all of our content, Reuters will be able to better serve its clients in the modern media environment.”
But Sky News chief executive Angelos Frangopoulos says the deal is interesting, but “I suspect it won’t stay that way for long”.
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