Associate Press is planning to charge its local members — members who already pay high membership fees — to publish AP news on its Web sites.

I met a couple of AP execs this week and I spoke with one of them about this plan — where’s the ROI was my question, especially when Yahoo! is already consuming all of APs feeds? The first response was along the lines of the huge fees Yahoo! pays for its feeds and how that helps keep members’ costs down.  OK, but how does that help a local news site if Yahoo!’s position of the feeds (along with a host of other Web sites) totally devalues the content?

AP does very little to drive page views for local news sites, so what does AP think it’s providing that is worth paying for?

A pair of my bosses, Bob Benz and Mike Phillips, have floated an idea on OJR to create an open-source news cooperative. Commenters on the article have pointed out some potential pitfalls, but considering the alternative — paying AP for content that has no real value — a news co-op seems pretty attractive.

Kim Komando addresses the proliferation of online gaming, the WTO and the Justice Department …

Since 2002, the DOJ has pressured media companies to pull ads for online gambling. Clear Channel, the nation’s largest radio company, stopped airing ads for online casinos that year. Other mainstream media companies have followed suit.

If you ever wonder, however, about all of the online poker commercials you see, you’ll notice that what they’re advertising are “play money” games. Poker Stars, for example, runs ads for PokerStars.Net, which is an entirely play money site. The real money site is PokerStars.com. A pretty slick way of getting around any real or preceived government prohibition on gambling ads.

Meanwhile, Rolling Stone contributes another chit to the poker hype machine.

I’m in Los Angeles for Media Center’s Mobile Media conference. I’ve been shooting a little video over the last two days. The camera is my $85 special, but some of the frames are worthwhile. Take a look.

Temple Stark is hosting podcasts … here.

Are some hitters more lucky than others? Well, with a tool like BABIP , you can figure out who is just getting lucky (or unlucky) and who is getting expected results.

Well, world, another podcast from howardowens.com is on the server (RSS). In this one, I talk about my fantasy baseball team and poker and then chat with Miss Billie about the Pope, Prince Charles, Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie. And of course, Miss Billie has some helpful advice for the ladies.