What Cebu City needs is a housing czar

SEOUL (AP) - News and information are reaching consumers in sometimes surprising ways, pushing providers to creatively adapt their output to address online demands, Associated Press President and CEO Tom Curley said Thursday.

"The clear imperative today is that we have to go where the users are, and fit our content and interactivity to the screen they happen to be using," Curley said in a speech to the Seoul Digital Forum 2007.

For AP, a news cooperative founded in 1846 and traditionally focused on newspapers and broadcast outlets, that has meant big changes in recent years, including a constant search for new ways to deliver the output of its journalists via the Internet, Curley said.

"Consumers are consuming more content than ever, but we have to provide it in new ways and under different terms from those that drove our business through the 20th century," Curley said during his multimedia presentation to the forum.

The event, an annual three-day gathering of leading technology and media industry figures sponsored by South Korea's SBS television network, this year drew Google Inc. Chairman Eric Schmidt, among others. Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer attended last year.

As an example of an unexpected delivery channel, Curley said AP recently announced a deal to put news on the Nintendo Wii game console, a move he called "a big stretch from the front page of the daily newspaper."

Curley also said news providers, which have already forged relationships with Internet titans such as Google and Yahoo, must also look to new players, in particular MySpace and other social networking sites for opportunities.

Despite all the changes brought about by the Internet, Curley, who took the helm of AP in 2003 after serving as president and publisher of USA Today, emphasized that the fundamentals of the industry remain the same.

"As we consider the digital future for media, let's be very clear about one thing: technology may change how journalists work, but it has never changed what journalists do," he said.

The Associated Press is a not-for-profit cooperative owned by its member newspapers and broadcasters, a global network providing coverage of news, sports, business, entertainment, politics and technology in all media formats. On any given day, more than half the world's population sees news from AP.