The appearances by the three leading US presidential candidates grabbed the banner headlines at this year's meeting of the leaders of the newspaper industry, but that wasn't the only big news. A new advertiser-supported news service for iPhones was unveiled Monday that offers new hope for cash-strapped newspapers.

Known as the Mobile News Network, the service is a new product from the Associated Press that is in testing phase, according to AP President and CEO Tom Curley. Curley told an audience at the AP's annual meeting that the new service:

"[W]ill provide a national platform for smart phone users to access local
content from brands they trust. Members can participate
by providing local news that will appear alongside their logos.
Importantly, the network also offers a new outlet for members to sell
local advertising to the mobile audience.”

AP says that the service should become widely available by summer, and that other smartphones will eventually be added to the network. The service will be free to consumers. AP will split the ad revenues with local news providers.

Bloggers took note.

Nadir thinks the new service should be a financial success, but suggests:

" Mobile News Network will be organized by ZIP code. I think AP should
also think about adding Location Based Services with phones that are
GPS-capable, the iPhone isn’t yet, but they’ve been some rumors
predicting that Apple will add this functionality in the next
generation of this device."

Staci Kramer flagged another new AP service aimed at improving protections for copyright holders, while making it easier to license AP member content. The service will tag AP stories with copyright info and links for sharing ang licensing. Kramer likes the idea in principle, but thinks the execution is a little wacky:

"Some of the options seem to go a bit too far—licensing an excerpt based
by the number of words, for instance. Fifty cents each for 5-25
words—really—with a sliding scale to 20 cents per word for 101-250. No
educational pricing, no non-profit pricing. (No grip on reality?)"

Finally, many bloggers noted that the American Society of Newspaper Editors' annual newsroom census documented what everyone knows: newspaper staffs became much smaller this year, and much less diverse. Carolyn Lo notes that the leading professional organization for journalists of color have stopped pushing for more minority hiring. Instead they are pushing to diversify the ranks of managers and owners of news organizations. They're also asking employers to keep diversity in mind when making job cuts.