The Associated Press announced Monday it will cut rates significantly in 2010 to help struggling newspapers.

The Associated Press, a nonprofit created by newspapers, announced Monday it will cut rates significantly for 2010.

Changes announced by the AP at its annual meeting in San Diego include $35 million in rate assessment reductions for 2010 on top of $30 million it already instituted for 2009.

The 163-year-old newswire service also will allow member newspapers to cancel their membership with one year’s notice instead of two, while offering a discount to papers that stay on a two-year cancellation notice.

Jim Kennedy, AP’s vice president of strategic planning, said in a telephone interview that AP would have to reduce its costs to compensate for the rate cuts. That includes not filling vacant jobs and possibly buyouts.

The reason? Struggling newspapers can’t pay for their membership. Cutting rates, then, is the only option for the Associated Press.

There is, of course, another option: perhaps the Associated Press could try to be less subjective in its reporting. Newspapers are losing readers for a variety of reasons – the Internet for instance – but an important one is that the public believes that they are ‘too liberal.’ The AP has become increasingly liberal in the last couple of years, and has stopped hiding its bias. Member-newspapers do no longer print objective reports about what is going on in the world, but more often that not slanted columns written by ideological hacks.

Not only will the AP cut rates, it will also go after those who use its products illegally:

In a crackdown on Web piracy, the AP board of directors said they were launching a “newspaper industry initiative to protect news content from misappropriation online.”

“We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories,” AP chairman Dean Singleton said.

The AP statement said the news agency would work with Internet portals and other partners who legally license content “and would pursue legal and legislative actions against those who dont.”

This is where “unfair use” comes into play, of course. In the past, the AP has published ridiculous guidelines. Quoting two or three sentences would already be in breach with the organization’s copyrights. These guidelines also left questions such as “is quoting a politician also quoted by the AP considered theft?” open.

Organizations and companies have to protect themselves. That’s logical. But the AP should be sure not to cross the line between self protection and an attempt to wipe out all competition so as to establish a monopoly.