New.Journalism.Review

The Independent asks whether Google News is killing-off newspaper journalism. (http://ping.fm/9pZzp), as Rupert Murdoch has been arguing.

Murdoch sees three evils preventing him from dominating the entire world (!)  – 1) The BBC (see previous posts) 2) Freebie 'newspapers' and lastly,  Google News. 

The Independent also has concerns about Google – it states in the leader:

"Google and other websites make big money from the audiences they attract for their content, which is Hoovered up from countless news sources all around the world. The creators of that content, meanwhile, earn not a bean from such aggregators – they often do not even give their permission for it to be taken – and are unable to sell it for themselves online because it has already been made freely available."

Google, on the face of it, contribute nothing to supporting quality journalism. It employs no journalists, just a massive database which pinches headlines from newspaper websites and prioritizes them to form a news page. We have no idea what its news biases are. Editorial selections are based on some top-secret algorithm. 

But it's wrong to suggest that Google's influence on journalism is entirely negative. What Google do, rather well, is direct shed loads of traffic to news sites, at least that's the general idea. Problems arise if Google allows its users to read entire stories on its own website rather than encouraging people to click-through. 

Google's dominance of search (dare I say, 'near monopoly') which is the problem here. We live in a world where few people care to use Yahoo!, Bing (or Bling! or Blip! or Blah! – whatever it's called), Ask or AltaVista. 

Newspaper sites can easily remove their content from Google. Or they could simply put it behind a 'pay wall'. But as The Independent newspaper knows from bitter experience, 'pay walls' simply don't work for general news.

So if 'pay walls' have failed and sites need lots of traffic to generate  ad revenue -  what then? Shouldn't they be paying Google to carry news headlines? I think that probably summarises the debate as it stands today. 

In an ideal world, it would be better to see some competition in search aggregation. Perhaps we should all start to use UK-based NewsNow (http://ping.fm/ok1sE) instead.

Until then, newspapers can learn from Google in so far as audiences these days want news content which is tailored to their individual interests. That's why paying £2 for a Sunday newspaper, only to chuck half of its supplements away into the recycle bin, just seems seems a bit of an odd activity in 2009.

Paul Hayes, MD Times Newspapers, told Internet World (annual IT trade show held at Earls Court, occasionally Olympia) said that "relatively few [Blogs] will be read beyond the narrowest of audiences. Most will disappear unnoticed and, frankly, unmissed by the world".

This is the kind of self-satisfied comment you can expect from those that work in established media. But let’s not forget Murdoch has made more than his share of Net blunders. Only two people in the world can even remember the little known Murdoch-backed auction site called FiredUp.com. The wannabe eBay rival snuffed it in  April 2001, after just six months online. That was after heavy TV advertising featuring the likes of Bruce Willis.

There was the failure that was "Current Bun", an ISP which closed in 2000. Let’s not forget Line One (another ISP) or Revolver.com (a weird recruitment site, that was a spin-off from the Sunday Times).

All these websites: "disappeared unnoticed and, frankly, unmissed by the world".

Page3.com is the only surviving website from this era. Hmmm…. we wonder why?