Just read this item in the April 8 edition of APME Update, an e-mail newsletter (nothing to link to online yet):

AP CHANGING STYLE ON STATE ABBREVIATIONS

The Associated Press is changing its style on state abbreviations and Canadian cities to create a consistent and universal style for international and domestic use. Starting May 15, the proper style will be to spell out the names of U.S. states in all stories and datelines where a city is followed by a state name. SACRAMENTO, Calif., for example, will become SACRAMENTO, California. We also will drop the practice of including names of Canadian provinces in datelines. We will instead use Canada. VANCOUVER, British Columbia, for example, will become VANCOUVER, Canada.

Not only does this create a more consistent style for AP around the globe, but I expect some SEO benefits, since everyone searches either for full state names or uses the U.S. Postal Service abbreviations (which Google understands and translates).

The 2010 stylebook is due in a few weeks. I wonder what other changes are coming.

UPDATE at 8:31 p.m.: @gerrrib points me to this discussion about the change at SportsJournalists.com. It seems AP has been sending advisories about it for a week now. I don't know about your newsroom, but no one in mine sees these advisories in the age of APExchange. And isn't it weird that this is basically unGooglable?