Old media always goes to war with the new. So the following news is hardly surprising. Too bad for AP. They have no idea what they will be missing, which is a ringside seat to the next media revolution.

AP vs Bloggers: The Mainstream Media Declares War on Blogs:

But lets look a little deeper here, because this isn’t a case of one small media company taking on blogs, this is nearly the entire print media, and for good measure television and radio as well. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which is the vast majority of all mainstream media outlets. Through AP the mainstream media has declared war on blogging, and established law isn’t going to stop them trying to milk every last cent they can from bloggers who may not know any better, and like the music and movie industry before them, they will attempt to pick off blogs one by one with legal threats. Internecine warfare perhaps?

Could it also be the last throws of an empire of news exclusivity that stands on the precipice of defeat? Perhaps not into oblivion in a Battle of the Bulge, but more along the lines of the The Second Battle of the Somme? I don’t subscribe to the mainstream media will die meme that is often a popular call in some blogging circles, but there’s little doubt, proven by evidence that the mainstream media has entered a period of contraction in the English speaking world, a contraction of which at the moment knows no end.