Late on Friday, Associated Press executive editor Kathleen Carroll sent around a memo noting the closure of asap, the A.P.'s multimedia attempt to keep up with the kids. asap, said Carroll, was a "wildly inventive source of stories and sounds and pictures and video unlike those found anywhere else" and a "terrific journalism success," which was good at everything except, you know, making any money. (But what did them in? Was it the content-free Q&A with Jonathan Safran Foer? Was it their insistence on addressing the youngster via use of the second person?) No word yet on what's going to happen to the unit's 24 staffers, but with all the prize-winning journalism they've created over the last two years, it shouldn't be too hard for them to find other work. Full memo below.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I want to talk with you about today's announcement that we are ending asap as a standalone product on Oct. 31. Since it launched 22 months ago, asap has been a wildly inventive source of stories and sounds and pictures and video unlike those found anywhere else. It has tapped and stretched great talent around the AP. It has generated a lot of buzz and won a cool award (an EPpy for best news web site). It is a terrific journalism success. Economic success, however, has proved more elusive, which is why the separate service is ending. When the service ends, the asap staff will be disbanded as a standalone unit. But we don't want to lose what's best about it: asap-style storytelling is vital to our future. So we are going to replant those skills into other departments in the AP. We've just begun working on what that will look like and what that will mean for asap staffers. We're looking at several departments that already have a lot of cross-pollination with asap, like Lifestyles and Entertainment. We'll be looking at asap's popular videos, too. We'll know more about all this in the coming weeks. What's important to know is that asap-style creativity and storytelling don't end when the service does. The concepts, the images, the voices, the attitude, the language, the point of view ... all the wonderful ways to pull readers into a story ... those belong in today's AP. And we will find a way to make that happen. Kathleen