The Associated Press will not haz a cheeseburger after all.

It comes as a surprise to everyone that the wire service was in actual contractual talks for months–yes, “actual months” Fishbowl NY breathlessly assures us–with Pet Holdings Inc. (aka the owners of I Can Haz Cheeseburger.) The reason, according to an interview with Pet Holdings CEO Ben Huh in the Los Angeles Times,

“They felt that allowing the unwashed masses to [alter image captions] would be against their journalistic integrity.”

The main question (“How does an old media monolith like the AP remain hip and relevant in the age of cats with white text?”) is a frivolous statement. The AP has one of the better mobile apps through iTunes, but still suffered earlier this year when Google News revealed it would not host any new content from AP after contract negotiations failed.

Of course, you could always just use Skitch.