AP promotes Seagrave to post overseeing efforts to revive revenue growth at news cooperative

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AP promotes Seagrave to chief revenue officer

NEW YORK — The Associated Press is promoting Jane Seagrave to chief revenue officer as the news cooperative tries to bring in more money from digital channels to help offset recent reductions in revenue from traditional media.

Seagrave, a senior vice president currently in charge of the AP’s global product development, will replace Tom Brettingen, who plans to retire this year. The change announced Thursday will become effective March 1.

The new job will expand Seagrave’s responsibilities to cover all the different facets of AP’s business. She will continue to guide global product development, at least in the early stages of the transition.

Seagrave, 55, will be taking on the new challenge at a critical juncture in the AP’s 164-year history.

After years of steady growth, the AP’s revenue has been declining because less money is coming in from newspapers and broadcasters squeezed by advertising revenue declines during the recession. After lowering its fees for U.S. newspapers by $30 million last year, the AP will reduce fees for newspapers and broadcasters by $45 million in 2010.

The not-for-profit AP hasn’t released its financial report for 2009, but it’s expected to show that revenue fell about 6 percent to roughly $700 million. The erosion prompted the company to reduce its payroll by about 10 percent last year in a streamlining that included laying off about 90 news employees.

The AP hopes to generate more revenue from the Internet and mobile devices. As part of those efforts, the AP is negotiating new licensing deals with Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. while trying to curb unauthorized use of its material on blogs and other Web sites.

Seagrave has focused primarily on digital media since she rejoined the AP in 2003. She handled previous licensing negotiations with Internet companies and oversaw the development of a news application for the iPhone and other mobile devices. More than 3 million people have downloaded the AP’s free mobile app to their phones. The application hasn’t generated substantial revenue for the AP yet, but management expects it to evolve into a moneymaker as people increasingly get their news through mobile devices.

“We have got some very profitable revenue streams that we will build on and then we have to explore every opportunity to diversify our business on new platforms,” Seagrave said in an interview.

Seagrave first worked as an AP reporter beginning in 1980 in New Mexico. She left the AP in 1986 to go to graduate school and later worked as an executive at legal publications and a business technology news service before rejoining the company in 2003.

Brettingen, 61, joined the AP as a reporter in South Dakota and later served in various management roles.