
Google partners to fund new local media sites - danso
https://www.axios.com/google-local-news-sites-funding-mcclatchy-df9988e5-b0ad-42dc-b579-ff014e98467b.html
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zoul
The main problem is that this just does not scale. Facebook and Google have
damaged the business model of local media all over the world – now how can
they fix that by reintroducing local media to a few towns below 500 thousand
people? If they really want to undo the damage, a systemic change is needed,
otherwise it’s just feel good PR.

(I’m from a former communist country and this almost feels like the
collectivization: prevent people from running their own businesses and then be
so kind as to let them work for the central government. Spoiler: it did not
work.)

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kmlx
can't the same be said about horse drawn carriage companies? ford model t came
in and damaged their business model.

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zoul
I don’t think so. How does Google replace the journalism it helped to destroy?
How can a single entity with its own political and other biases replace a
vast, diverse network of local journalism?

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kmlx
why does google need to do anything? why is it google's fault that the news
publishers don't know how to make money?

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52-6F-62
They do know how to make money. Many are even still profitable—just not by a
huge margin.

Being that many were bought up by conglomerates as a whole, the publishers
have had to answer—indirectly—to shareholder demands. Those demands are
usually that they want to see continual, even exponential, growth every
quarter. When publishing doesn't deliver such exponential growth, their cut of
the budget gets reduced and reduced and reduced.

They're not failing of their own merit. They're being strangled by several
different hands.

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thekhatribharat
Empowering arduous local media sites deters fake news which is one of the most
pressing issues for web giants like Google and Facebook. If Google/Facebook
can inject money to fuel arduous journalism, it could help allievate the fake
news problem looming over their products.

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mudil
First, Google, a surveillance machine, kills journalism by monopolizing the ad
business. And now it pretends to support journalism through its handouts. Nice
society we are building, folks.

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cromwellian
Well, it's like saying Autos killed Horse and Buggies, and auto manufacturers
contributing to horse farms means they are bad people.

How likely was it that local news was going to survive the digital transition
as is, when suddenly, people who never ventured more than 25 miles from where
they are born, and mostly obtained news by paper delivery or local TV, can
suddenly access the sum total of human knowledge and any news all over the
world?

Suddenly your local paper, which had "default" access set almost like a
default app on an OS, is no longer the default because the barrier to
accessing everything else is way lower.

The writing was on the wall, in the same way that streaming killed optical
media and optical media killed LPs. Or in the same way that e-commerce is
killing retail once logistics gets cheap enough to make delivery cheaper than
buying in store.

This was going to happen inevitably.

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zoul
_The writing was on the wall, in the same way that streaming killed optical
media and optical media killed LPs. Or in the same way that e-commerce is
killing retail once logistics gets cheap enough to make delivery cheaper than
buying in store._

This is a completely different matter. Here you are giving examples of
services getting replaced by a better competitor. How does Google or Facebook
improve on local journalism? They have just destroyed an important public
service with no viable replacement in sight. The situation has maybe improved
for the advertisers, but the public has lost a big time.

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cromwellian
They didn’t destroy them, digital media and the internet did by making a vast
number of information channels suddenly available.

In the same way that 500 cable channels and 24/7 news networks hurt local TV
news.

When I grew up my TV reception could only turn into 3 TV stations, and we had
one real paper: the Baltimore sun. There was no choice but to consume them by
sheer convenience.

As soon as cable and internet virtually eliminated barriers due to geographic
distance the dominance of local media with a guaranteed audience was ended.

Even without search, the internet put national And global newspapers at the
touch of individuals. The idea that exposing your local outlet to the ease of
accessing 1000 competitors wouldn’t have hurt them is dubious.

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CM30
Yeah, this is pretty much it in a nutshell. Journalism as a business only
really worked when there were significant gatekeepers to publishing
information on a large scale, where competition was limited and where these
publications were the best place for advertisers to advertise their wares.

That's not coming back. Any journalists who think the 'old world' is going to
survive in the internet era are flat out delusional. You cannot undo time and
technology, and you cannot try and freeze society at the turn of the
millennium.

Hence the solution isn't to throw money at all these sites and publications,
especially given they almost certainly won't be sustainable in today's
economic climate. It's to find new ways of distributing information for a new
generation, one that doesn't involve ads, subscriptions or newsrooms full of
wriers.

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pas
Reputation, brand, accuracy is still important.

We might laugh at BuzzFeedNews, but probably millions of people grew up on
BuzzFeed, and for them it was probably more reputable than let's say the NYT.

That said, independent sources, cross-verification of information is going to
be a big challenge, especially as fakes/faking become more important. (Eg in a
war zone. Was it a false flag or not? Did that rocket attack happened at all?)
Even though AI cannot [yet] understand it, it's perfect for looking for
similarities and similar posts. (So if someone sets up a system that ingests
the twitter + FB + YT firehose for example.)

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mateo1
"Extremely dangerous to our democracy" echoes in my ears once again.

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GoblinSlayer
When you make a revolution, taking the media is the first step.

