he Associated Press may soon radically change the landscape of our news media as part of a new initiative announced this week.

“Every major news story that breaks will have live coverage from a video eye-witness within minutes of it happening,” Sandy MacIntyre, AP’s director of global video, told Journalism.co.uk.

As 4G LTE networks continue to expand across cities and towns, the expensive satellite trucks that were once needed to remotely transmit live breaking news are becoming obsolete. While cell phones still cannot reliably transmit the professional-quality HD footage that networks depend on, LiveU, a company the AP has partnered with, has developed technology to transmit a 1080p signal over multiple cellular connections that is battery powered and easily fits in a backpack.

Many television stations are already using LiveU to supplement their much more expensive satellite trucks, and a couple years ago one of LiveU’s customers loaned out streaming backpacks to several of the more popular live streamers who were participating in the Occupy demonstrations around the country. The AP has also utilized LiveU to help it cover a number of stories this year, including its video coverage from Nelson Mandela’s hospital.

LiveU Head of US Marketing Ken Zamkow told JTM that for about $2,000 a month, anyone can lease the equipment they need to stream live video. There are numerous hardware options available, including packages that are much smaller the LiveU backpacks, said Zamkow.

The company has also developed software that allows broadcasters to simultaneously use both cellular and wifi connections to increase the bandwidth available to stream video from both phones and laptops. And the AP plans to use its computer software in addition to the company’s hardware, said Zamkow.

I’ve been exploring mobile-live-video for several years; in 2008 I helped produce a multiple-camera live news broadcast that set out to cover the Olympic torch relay and the accompanying protests as it winded its way through San Francisco (as it turned out the torch was shuttled by van to an undisclosed location and neither of our mobile teams managed to catch any footage of the elusive torch). It quickly became apparent at that time that cellular transmission rates weren’t fast enough and the necessary hardware was clunky at best.

Things have changed a lot in the last five years, and what was once science fiction is effectively now reality. Anyone with a smart  phone can distribute live video across the globe, and under the right conditions that footage can look and sound amazing.

In addition to its partnership with LiveU, the AP has also purchased a minority stake in Bambuser, one of several companies that let consumers stream live video from their phones. In a recent article Journalism.co.uk explained how these two partnerships will allow the AP to offer live video from both professional and citizen reporters.

With LiveU, the news agency is able to provide professional-quality live streams more quickly and easily, while Bambuser puts live video capabilities in the hands of the public who may be able to provide footage before journalists arrive at the scene of a story.

“Companies like LiveU and Bambuser are changing the way real-time video news is transmitted from the field to broadcasters and digital publishers – and how it flows through the social media space,” MacIntyre said. “AP needs to be at the heart of that change; harnessing the new technology, adding our news judgment, helping viewers understand what the news they are seeing live actually means and explaining why they should care.”

If the APs entire army of reporters were constantly at the ready to broadcast live, the possibility for new content to augment news sites and even TV broadcasts is incredible. Every press conference attended by an AP reporter could easily be streamed to the thousands of news agencies that subscribe to the AP. And footage from breaking news would not only bring in a larger sustained audience, but it would also create additional material to enhance TV broadcasts.

When you combine that potentially-massive influx of video with the possibility of a curated stream of live video from the millions of people carrying smart phones and you have the potential to create a rich immersive journalism environment that until now remained a distant fantasy.

I haven’t been able to speak to anyone at AP about their plans, but I’ll be updating this post when I’m able to learn more about the companies plans to implement this new partnership.

UPDATED: (07/22/13) Added comments from LiveU’s Ken Zamkow and corrected story to explain that the LiveU backpacks were loaned to people at Occupy by one of LiveU’s customers.

Thousands of newspapers across the country would instantly collapse if advertising completely disappeared, but for one small newsroom in San Francisco it’d just be one more story to tell in the next issue of the paper.

For the past three years, the San Francisco Public Press, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, has been distributing a newspaper throughout the Bay Area that is completely free of advertising. The paper sells for $1 at nearly 50 locations around San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley, and the quarterly newspaper is also available through the mail for $4 an issue.

Michael Stoll, a seasoned reporter, editor and educator who wrote for the Philadelphia Inquirer and the San Francisco Examiner before becoming a journalism instructor at San Jose State University and the University of San Francisco, created the Public Press after attending his first JTM gathering inAmherst, Massachusetts.

“The open-space format of the meetings creates a natural serendipity where you can meet people who are doing similar projects and taking similar approaches across the country or abroad,” said Stoll on his experiences attending three JTM gatherings in which the participants define the agenda using an organizational technique called Open Space Technology. “The San Francisco Public Press benefited from this environment by starting out with the architecture of openness we saw permeating Journalism That Matters. More than anything, the meetings, and the email conversations that followed, encouraged us to just get started and try new things.”

After hosting several brainstorming sessions with Bay Area journalists in 2008, the Public Press received its first grant from the San Francisco Foundation in March of 2009 and launched a website later that year with publishing partners that included both the New York Times and McSweeney’s Panorama, a unique edition of the literary journal David Eggers publishes quarterly. 

In December of 2009, the Public Press contributed the cover story for Panorama, the 33rd issue ofTimothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, which for the first-and-only time was published in the form of a newspaper. Clocking in at a massive 320 pages, the one-off newspaper-format was Eggers’ attempt to ask the question whether there’s still life in printed news. 

The nationally-renowned author received his answer when the paper immediately sold out across the Bay Area and a second printing was quickly ordered. Six months after helping Eggers publish Panorama, The San Francisco Public Press released the first issue of their own print publication in the Summer of 2010. 

Unlike Panorama, which relied on advertising to fortify the money generated selling the paper, the Public Press has been staunchly advertising-free since inception. During the early meetings I attended while the newspaper was only a loose concept, Stoll seemed open to any ideas about where to take the paper unless they included advertising. Instead of ad-revenue, the Public Press relies on individual donors and foundation funding along with the money generated by selling the newspaper, which is made available for free at some senior centers and other community spaces in San Francisco that serve lower income residents.

“I think that the nonprofit model is under-utilized in new business,” said Stoll. “Especially since the commercial news model has so disastrously gone off the rails with the collapse of the advertising business.” 

The Public Press just published it’s 11th issue last month. Each paper is divided into two sections. The front half of the paper includes in-depth coverage focusing on a particular public policy topic — the latest edition explores global warming and includes analysis of “California’s grand plan to curb climate change,” which was financed through the Fund for Investigative Journalism — and the back of the paper is comprised of follow-up coverage on topics previously tackled by the paper along with stories provided by its numerous nonprofit partners.

“There are many examples of corporations that have no compunction at all,” Stoll said when asked why the Public Press has chosen to only partner with nonprofit organizations. “Journalistically there are very many similar start-ups to ours that share our values and outlook, but we would rather support the community that grew up around the culture. … There’s a sense of camaraderie in the nonprofit sector.”

Lila Lahood works full-time as publisher alongside Stoll. The paper also employes a part-time news editor, a part-time membership manager and is hiring freelance writers on a regular basis. To support this growing infrastructure, the Public Press is now focused on developing its base of paid members. Right now it has over 200 supporters, but Stoll says he hopes to increase that number in the months ahead.

“The conversation in the nonprofit world — the buzz word — is membership and community support. And even though our program isn’t very big, we have some significant experience doing it and now we’re getting organized and realizing what an asset the community is,” said Stoll. “We’ve only had a concerted membership program for the last six months and that’s really been paying off.”

There is a lot of venture capital flowing into today’s startups, but it can be very challenging to convince people to invest in new journalism enterprises.

Matter is changing that with an incubator designed to help media startups succeed. Based in San Francisco, Matter announced its first call for participants late last year. The six companies that were chosen for the first session have since graduated, and Matter has opened its doors for a whole new class.

The program runs from the beginning of October until the end of February, and applications are due by July 28. At the end of the four months, the teams will demo their products in both San Francisco and New York.

Matter is inviting teams of two to four cofounders to submit a short proposal. Matter CEO Corey Ford, said at an info session last year that successful teams would be made up of hackers, hustlers, designers and storytellers. Hackers to write the code. Hustlers to promote it and sell the idea. Designers to revise the product until there is something viable, and, of course, storytellers.

Next week Matter will hold info sessions in Boston, New York, Washington DC and Chicago. They will also host sessions in San Francisco and Los Angeles in early July and there is a virtual session scheduled as well. The sessions are likely to fill up, so register today if you plan to attend.

One of the most important components in creating a successful proposal — and a successful company — is to have the right team. In order to help entrepreneurs who are interested in pitching Matter find their future cofounders, JTM has created this form to help you find the hacker, hustler, designer, or storyteller you’re looking for.

I will be using the information you submit to put potential team members in touch with each other, and I encourage you to tell other people about it so that there are enough hackers and hustlers to go around.