Attention readers of the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune or any of the Tribune Co.’s dozen other publications: something is missing from your paper this week. The Tribune Co. is struggling. Struggling to keep readership up, costs down, and its news empire afloat. So this week, as an experiment, they taking a week-long break from the Associated Press. (To understand the complexity of this decision, let me point out that I read about this on the Chicago Tribune website - in an AP story.) Content from Reuters, Bloomberg and CNN will fill the spaces normally occupied by the Associated Press. And, if editors are creative, readers won’t have a clue that anything has changed. But the simple test of “can we get by?” overlooks the broader role of the AP because much of what the AP provides is unseen by readers, listeners and viewers. The organization keeps event calendars, staffs bureaus in state capitals, distributes pool reports and acts as a non-partisan clearing house. In short, the AP is the 24-hour foundation for almost every newsroom in the country. (more...)