Apparently, the Associated Press, in a noble effort to appear as much as an obsolete legacy media dinosaur as possible, has rules barring bloggers from citing more than four words out of an AP article without paying them fees for their “journalism”. Details at this Boing Boing blog post, I mean, journalistic article.
This got me thinking: What would AP headlines look like were everything past the first four words chopped off? I checked out recent AP headlines and here are a few perfectly legal fair use citations from the AP, under their stringent rules:
“Bali bomber warns of”
“Hundreds of same-sex couples”
“Cuban TV shows new”
“Celtics rout Lakers 131-92”
“Clinton asks top donors”
“Mississippi River breaks through”
“Bush to urge Congress”
“Probe: Pentagon lawyers sought”
These spartan headlines are almost more eye-catching than the five-or-more word headlines available at the AP’s site. Perhaps I’m on to something. I could perhaps even put together a little web service that does this automatically, but I can’t be bothered, because in the end, who cares about the AP anyway?