The Metro, the free daily paper we all pick up when getting on the train, which also publishes in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia has decided to terminate its contract with the AP and focus more on original content.

Says editor-in-chief Tony Metcalf: "We believe that the future of our titles lies in producing as much of our own material as possible. Encouraging existing staff to write more and employing new writers gives us a higher degree of flexibility and results in a product which is more relevant to the young, professional audience we, and our advertisers, seek."

Also, as we all know, the AP is expensive and now that the City section is on its last legs there's plenty of writers looking for a place to tell their local stories. Full release after the jump.

*Update* Statement from the AP: "The Associated Press understands that a lot of newspaper companies are reexamining their strategies in this challenging economic climate. Metro remains an international customer of the AP."

Metro USA Newspaper Drops Associated Press Content

Metro USA, which publishes daily titles in New York, Boston and Philadelphia, has terminated its contract with the Associated Press effective April 1, 2009.

"We believe that the future of our titles lies in producing as much of our own material as possible. Encouraging existing staff to write more and employing new writers gives us a higher degree of flexibility and results in a product which is more relevant to the young, professional audience we, and our advertisers, seek," says Tony Metcalf, Editor in Chief of Metro USA. "Another factor in our decision was cost, something that cannot be ignored in these difficult economic times. By relying more on our own reporting staff, we make a substantial saving while protecting the newspapers' quality and improving relevance to our local markets."

The newspapers will be using other sources of content for its local and national news. As an international newspaper and one of the world's largest news organizations with more than 600 journalists on staff, Metro benefits from use of its 84 daily editions worldwide to provide up-to-minute global news coverage.