Next week, beginning November 8, the Tribune Co. newspapers including the LA Times are going to use as little Associated Press content as possible. It's an experiment designed to gauge whether discontinuing use of all AP content would be a practical option for the future. From Phil Rosenthal at the Chicago Tribune:

The trial is scheduled to be conducted almost 13 months after Tribune Co. gave the AP a required two-year warning that it might drop the news service, effective Oct. 15, 2010. Tribune Co. said at the time that it was keeping its options open while weighing what role, if any, the AP would play in its future.

Some content Tribune Co. papers get from the Associated Press, such as sports statistics, will still be published during the experiment. The company also said that if the AP is the only available source for a report considered vital, it will use that AP coverage. But the company wants to see to what kind of void the absence of AP stories and photos would have.