Is the Associated Press for sale?

As the nation celebrated its 250th anniversary, there was more than bad weather and divisive politics weighing heavily on the minds of newspeople. An American icon, The 180-year-old Associated Press, is in what many fear is failing health.

"The AP should just go ahead and go out of business instead of stretching it out," one disgruntled retired journalist said as she read about the news service's latest round of employee layoffs.

Founded in 1846 by five New York newspapers that wanted to save money, the AP is under real financial pressure but its executives insist it is not in danger of failing or being sold.

There's perhaps a touch of irony in its current predicament. Founded by newspapers trying to save a few dollars on the cost of getting news from Europe, the AP has now been largely abandoned by the newspapers who were its primary source of revenue for nearly two centuries.

Critics say the AP failed to diversify its revenue base when it had the resources to do so. That may be true but the stark fact is that it didn't and now AP’s old newspaper business has shrunk sharply as newspapers continue their fixation on saving money, this time at AP's expense.

In 2024, Gannett and McClatchy — more than 230 outlets combined — said they would stop using AP content. AP itself said U.S. newspaper fees were then only “just over 10%” of annual income, down from a time when newspapers supplied virtually all of AP’s income.

That shrinkage has continued. AP reported in May that its revenue from newspapers had fallen 25% over four years, and that Gannett and McClatchy had lived up to their promise and dropped AP later in 2024. As a result, it has laid off and bought out scores of U.S.-based journalists in recent years.

"A position of strength"

But AP says its business is not collapsing. AP executives described the cuts as a restructuring from “a position of strength,” not a rescue move. They said AP customers are now dominated by broadcast, digital and technology companies, and that revenue from technology companies had grown 200% over the same four-year period.

In what it describes as fine-tuning its product line-up, AP is actively pivoting away from text-wire newspaper economics and print-ready stories. In April, AP said it was offering more buyouts as part of a move away from its newspaper-focused model. AP is emphasizing visuals, video, elections data, workflow tools, AI/data products, direct consumer traffic, reader donations and philanthropy to try to fill the gaps.

"Oldest and largest" no more

AP used to describe itself as the "oldest and largest" global news service. Now it admits to being the oldest but is mum on the question of size.

Its scale is still enormous, however. AP says it has customers in 126 countries, journalists in all 50 states, 220 locations in 90 countries, and produces about 5,000 pieces of journalism daily, more than 80% of it visual. It also reported 2.5 billion APNews.com app page views in 2025 and reader donations up 447%.

Ex-AP staffers greet such claims with skepticism. A former Newark staffer recalled that the AP once had nearly 30 reporters covering New Jersey and now has only a handful. That is a pattern that's repeated around the country, where AP once provided solid coverage of state government and local coverage in major cities.

These days, citizens curious about local news must rely largely on television and small online newsletters, as newspapers slice more deeply into their coverage than anyone had thought possible just a few years ago.

Former AP executives answer the claims that they failed to prepare for the current media downturn by noting that their newspaper members consistently balked at paying more than the bare minimum for AP services, keeping the not-for-profit cooperative lacking the funds for major marketing development efforts and technological research.

Gannett, on the other hand, was hardly lacking in resources. It was extremely profitable by newspaper-industry standards and had unusually fat margins for a media company. In the early-to-mid 2000s, before the full digital advertising collapse, it was a cash machine: in 2005, Gannett reported $7.6 billion in revenue, $2.05 billion in operating income, and $1.24 billion in net income. That is roughly a 27% operating margin and a 16% net margin, very strong for a publicly traded operating company.

Although it had diversified into broadcast outlets, Gannett also failed to see and prepare for the scorched-earth destruction of the local advertising market that it had profited so handsomely from for so long and merged with Gatehouse Media in 2019.

"There's no reason two guys in a garage in California had to invent Google. AP had the talent and the expertise but top management was largely apathetic to internal efforts to get in front of the digital revolution and there was no member pressure to do so," said one disgruntled former executive.

No sale likely ... for now

As for journalists' fears that the venerable news service – known for its fact-based, nonpartisan coverage – is in danger of being sold to another organization that might bring a more ideological tone to its coverage, there's not much evidence to support it.

There are no credible reports that AP is up for sale or that CNN/CBS/Paramount is trying to acquire it, as one widely circulated rumor has it. The current CNN/CBS chatter is about Paramount Skydance’s pursuit of Warner Bros. Discovery, which would put CBS News and CNN under the same corporate roof if completed; that pending transaction has nothing to do with AP.

Structurally, an AP acquisition would be complicated. AP is an independent, not-for-profit news cooperative, not a normal public media company with shareholders looking for an exit. Its revenue is mainly from licensing journalism to news organizations and other customers, and AP says it reinvests any earnings into journalism.

Bottom line: AP has been hurt badly by the collapse of local newspapers, and its staff cuts show the pressure is serious. But the available evidence points more to a painful business-model pivot than to a distressed-sale situation. A CNN/CBS/Paramount purchase looks like idle speculation at this point, not a reported deal track.

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The author is a former deputy director of AP Broadcast Services.