this is mikel.org

Michael Boyle's weblog

  • home
  • archives
  • about
  • words

Google & the Newspaper Crisis

January 9, 2009 by Michael Boyle

This morning Wired’s Epicenter blog is running an interesting piece: Five Things Google Could Do For Newspapers. There’s some pretty interesting stuff in there, but my fear is that all of the suggestions are merely handwaving unless papers deal with the real problem – they don’t actually print enough real news. Newspapers made bets in the 90s and into the 00s that served (essentially) to divest themselves of the business of publishing the news, in many cases preferring wire services for the majority of news content. What (many) newspapers have become are reprinters of wire copy padded by a myriad of opinion, editorial, and marginally ethical fluff “journalism”.

What Google should do is to set up a fund to help struggling newspapers re-staff their news divisions and a deeply discounted consulting wing to help owners – who have made the bad decisions that got us where we are today – understand that their only real commercial value springs from factual reporting.

Share:

  • Tweet
  • Email

Tags: Google, Media, Newspapers, Wired

search

recent

  • Diouf Article
  • Anil Dash: We’re not being alarmist enough about climate change…
  • Learning about Gutenberg
  • From the “I thought I’d heard it all” file
  • One year since his passing: The Day Prince’s Guitar Wept the Loudest

Archives

Sports Montreal War US Politics Copyfight Canadian Politics Social Networks Web Design Email Canada Internet Design Funny NYTimes Search Arts Friend Software Music Google Wired Apple Microsoft Web GNE Personal Business International Affairs Blogging Test Browser Media
Michael Boyle Blog
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

RSS Feed

Copyright © 2000–2021 · Michael Boyle

Copyright © 2021 · Modern Portfolio Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.