AP via RSS

Unlike Reuters, the Associated Press has never published its online content directly to end-users. Instead, it has always offered it through member news organizations such as the P-I.

Now, in a noticeable break from past practice, the AP is making RSS feeds of its latest stories available directly "to individuals for personal, noncommercial use." They include headlines and the first paragraphs of the 10 most recent stories in key content areas such as top news, business, technology, entertainment, strange happenings and NASCAR coverage (!). The feeds link to the complete stories on an AP-branded site.

As Susan Mernit notes, the same RSS feeds are also available through AP member sites -- here's the SeattlePI.com version.

(Update: PaidContent.org's Rafat Ali provides some more details on AP's RSS strategy. The AP-branded story pages are just a temporary thing, it sounds like.)