The AP’s Nick Ascheim: Winding Wire Into Web Power

NYT.com vet launching online Gateway to news org’s polls, info

By Paige Albiniak -- Broadcasting & Cable, 8/23/2010 12:01:00 AM

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.”


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.