An article in the Raw Story last week spills the beans on Associated Press plans to centralize their content on the web rather than allowing licensees to publish AP stories on their own web sites. Licensees would print AP stories as they always have, but would have to link to the AP web site for stories that are unique to the AP such as special interest and investigative reporting pieces.

The new centralized web site will then be linked together via topic pages that collect the latest news stories around a given topic, which, the Raw Story speculates, could start to rival the likes of Wikipedia as a general information source online. While that seems like a long shot, the overall strategy for maintinaing profitability in an increasingly digital news world seems sound.