CNN goes a la carte

CNN, which began selling its content akin to a wire service earlier this year, has now broached the wall to a la carte service, a term that wire services have struggled with for years.

(See, the dirty little secret is that there are a lot of cross-subsidies inside the wires, just as there were with the old phone company; it's why papers in the smallest states, for instance, have been able to get a state report nominally on par with that of some of the largest. Start selling things individually, however, and a lot of things that make for a well-rounded wire report likely get ditched.)

Editor and Publisher reports CNN is selling single copies at $199 each through the CNN Wire Store. So it's not exactly whip out the credit card and buy a few. Still, I can see more than a few publishers doing the calculus - and puiting more pressure on AP.