Here’s some more Google-themed newspaper bailout ideas from Dan Froomkin writing for the brilliant Huffington Post.
I guess calling it a bailout may be a little harsh. It’s an investment. An investment in good journalism. Dan offers seven great ideas, including:
“‘Adopt’ a handful of newspapers, and help them build technologically-sophisticated Web sites, with an emphasis on micro-local and business-to-consumer relationships. For instance, local papers need ways to database local advertising, local content, and information on local readers — then serve up ads based on psycho-graphic and geographic information. Newspapers can’t seem to figure this out by themselves. Then make the technology available to others.”
Adopting just a handful could make this sound unfair. But if this was to happen in the UK, Google could perhaps adopt some groups. My friend works for the Scunthorpe Telegraph, part of the Grimsby and Scunthorpe Media Group, which is in turn owned by Northcliffe. Now, funding a design/functionality/advertising overhaul of the Grimsby and Scunthorpe Media Group would be a mere blip on the Google budget. Heck — doing the whole of Northcliffe wouldn’t cost Google that much, especially since most of the technology has already been created.
For Google, they get the added benefit of Google ads — of which they’d share revenue — on a load of UK regional sites. The regionals would enjoy being optimised for Google, leading to more readers. And, the brilliance of Google Adwords will mean advertisers would love it: Think how useful — on a story about, say, icy roads — an advert for the local garage selling good de-icer would be? If owned a small business, I’d be all over that.
Here’s another of his suggestions:
“Create an open-source journalism wire service, hiring excellent laid-off reporters to do great narrative and investigative work that’s free for the picking.”
I like this. But this would be a massive challenge. Should this be a success, it’ll lead to a helluva lot of jobs lost at the likes of the PA, AP and Reuters. This would roll over to many people — a huge amount of photographers make their money from pictures sold to the wires, and then sold on again — for cash.
And here lies the problem: Dan is looking at journalism from the point of view of the organisations. His open-source newswire idea forgets the journalists that make the world go round — the freelancers, the independents.
With the exception of Al Jazeera, no MSM organisation has a presence in Gaza. And, now Israel has issued a media lock down, no-one can get in. The reason why we’re getting footage is independent journalists, risking their lives by reporting.
Assuming Google wouldn’t pay for the content, and assuming by ‘free for the picking’ Dan means free to use, then who exactly is paying the independents? No-one, by the looks of it.
It’s a good start though. I’m starting to believe that Google is perhaps the only company that can save journalism.
Huff Post UK: Piers Morgan, can you hear me?
April 9th, 2009Is there any newspaper (online or otherwise) making such good investment in journalism than the Huffington Post? Last week it announced it would be investing $1.75 million in investigative journalism. The new Media Talk USA podcast asks whether Arianna Huffington could be the unlikely savour of the very finest strand of journalism — the investigators.
The Huffington Post is a strange beast. Launching in 2005 as essentially a ‘celebrity blog’, the HuffPo received a lukewarm reaction. Some disagreed with its mission, and others ignored. It was nothing too important — just a load of ego-tripping celebs doing no ‘real’ journalism. Newsweek described its aims as “[to] put heat (and perhaps even shine a little light) on the news of the day through diarylike musings, opinions and links”.
Which, for a good while, it was just that. Blogs, opinion… shouting. All good fun, but it’s no New York Times.
Taking a look at the site today, we can still see hallmarks of its birth, but it has evolved. The main content is still blogs — although for some reason they feel like columnists rather than bloggers, a set up more in keeping with Comment is Free. But it’s now referring to itself as ‘The Internet Newspaper’, dealing with news and video as well as the shouty blogs.
And now it’ll be pumping cash into its own investigations. I can’t wait to see the results — I hope the team can show the mainstream media guys how it’s done. While they’re sweating about re-writing a press release, the HuffPo can get back to the roots of journalism: finding stuff out.
But here’s what kills me: all this Huffington Post talk is very exciting — but it won’t affect me too much. Where is the UK HuffPo? Why don’t we have an online newspaper?
Why aren’t we getting investment for investigative journalism?
So I’m asking you, Piers Morgan. It’s up to you. Call it ‘The Morgan’ if you have to. Grab some friends, some cash, and set up office. Canary Wharf would be nice — you did your finest work there.
I find our lack of a good, well-read online-only newspaper very depressing. And the only thing stopping it is a lack of a big name. Someone who’s mere involvement would get clicks. For the first week — the buzz would be about it being new, but from there on in it’ll be the content that brings them back.
We’re long overdue anything like this. Piers is the only person I know who has the status, the money and, let’s face it, the skill to bring something like this to reality.
Now I know he’s busy with his career as a TV talent show judge/chat show host, but having read Piers’ book, I have a sneaky suspicion that you can take the man out of newspapers, but you can’t take newspapers out of the man. Come on Piers, I know you miss it.
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Posted in Comment, Newspapers, Tabloids, The Future, The Web
Tags: comment is free huffington post investigative journalism piers morgan