Since arriving at The Associated Press in March,
Nick Ascheim has been working to turn the traditional
wire service into a state-of-the-art information
provider via The AP's new
business unit, AP Gateway.
“[The AP] has been a wholesaler of news for the
past 160 years,” says Ascheim, who joined the service
as general manager of AP Digital after nearly
six years at NYTimes.com. “We needed a new way
to present our content so that The AP and our
membership both can thrive in a digital world.”
Providing quick and accurate content already
comprises the core of The AP’s business. Now, it
wants to offer customers a cutting-edge but userfriendly
way to present that content. The AP can do
that because, according to Ascheim, “We have an
understanding of the industry that we don’t think
other platform providers offer. We understand
what our customers need and how they work.”
Among Ascheim’s initiatives, AP Gateway is creating
a Website based on The AP’s popular college football polls. The site, www.APTop25.com, is set to launch this month.
It will stay up-to-the-minute with constant poll feeds, including stories
from both AP reporters and AP members who cover college football on
the local level. The service is developing the back-end, while it’s outsourcing the platform's front-end interface.
Ascheim, 40, didn’t always want to work in journalism.
After graduating from Cornell University
in 1992, he worked for the Lawyers Committee
for Human Rights for a year, where he took on the
task of shooting and editing videos. He quickly
came down with the news bug, so he got a job at
ABC News as a producer and worked there from
1993-96. In 1996, he helped launch FoxNews.
com, which kick-started both his digital and management
careers. He returned to school to get his
M.B.A. from Harvard University in 1998.
Prior to joining NYTimes.com, Ascheim was
CEO of TheSquare Inc., a networking and dating
site for the Ivy League set, from 2002-04.
