The Associated Press responds to my blog post. How about naming names instead of tell us to "rest assured" about the basis for its "important" plan?

Paul Colford, AP Director of Media Relations, responded to my earlier post raising questions about whether its "plan for reclaiming news" needed an editor.

I think it's important to give prominence to his response for two reasons: a sense of fairness requires me to give his words the same prominence my own writing had, and I think he raises an important issue that would open the door to a more fruitful discussion of news and who owns it in the Internet era. The following is the entirety of what he wrote:

"Mr. Temple appears to believe that the one "important internal document" on which he bases his blogpost is the lone, full summary of AP's ongoing efforts to protect its news content.

"Rest assured that additional materials, valuable research and AP's fruitful discussions with its members continue to inform this important undertaking."

Paul Colford
AP Director of Media Relations

I don't actually believe what Mr. Colford says I believe. But I have seen AP struggle to explain its position. Which raises questions for me about the quality and depth of the supporting material he assures us exists. But most important, the AP and other news organizations routinely urge government and powerful corporations to be open and transparent. Yet when dealing with such an important issue as what constitutes misappropriation of content and what should be done about it, the AP isn't operating in a transparent way.

Again, let's treat this the way the AP would treat a news story in the Internet era.

• AP should post a list on the Web with links to the "tens of thousands of Web sites" it believes are using AP content in unauthorized ways. Then the public could understand by example what the AP considers to be unauthorized use.
• AP should explain why it hasn't taken legal action against any of those sites that are in states where the "hot news" legal doctrine is recognized and it already has recourse to sue to stop the kind of free-riding it says is rampant. Many of the biggest states in the country recognize this doctrine: California, New York, Florida, Illinois, Missouri and Pennsylvania.

If it would take these steps, the public could better understand an important news organization's thinking and it could enter "fruitful" discussions beyond those it says it's having with its membership.

Rocky's Web site shouldn't be treated as junk yard

Alan Mutter raises an important - and sad - question in his post about the web site of the Rocky Mountain News. His headline asks "How long should dead paper linger on web?" My answer would be that it would be best for society if the paper's Web site could be archived and preserved. Barring that, though, Mutter is right that the current state of the web site is disturbing.

"I can’t help but wonder why the final website of the Rocky Mountain News remains online today as an uncomfortably maudlin reminder of the paper’s demise nearly six months after it closed," he writes.

The site has been disabled and sits as a painful reminder of the paper's last day. Instead of just disabling it, my former employer should have put up a page at the Rocky's url explaining what it is doing with the content from the web site and how readers interested in finding something can do so. That would have been a true public service. What they're doing now makes it seem they don't care anymore. Which I refuse to believe.