In an article posted online yesterday, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told Adam Lashinsky of Fortune Magazine that he wished he could save the newspaper industry, but he didn’t know how. Very generous.
Dan Froomkin, former Washington Post reporter and now head of the NeimanWatchdog.org wrote on Huffington Post some suggestions for how Google can help to save newspapers — things like “help them build technologically-sophisticated Web sites, with an emphasis on micro-local and business-to-consumer relationships” and “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.” Very helpful.
There is no doubt in my mind that with the money and influence that Google commands, and the intelligence and commitment they display to the projects they pursue, the world’s search giant has the potential to solve all the newspaper industry’s problems. And I have no doubt that most media companies, and newspaper owners in particular, would welcome the bailout at this point, proving unable to figure out what truly ails them, and unwilling to make the significant changes necessary to adapt to our changing world.
So, what Should Google Do?
Google’s mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Obviously, without newspapers – or media in general – there would be far less valuable information to organize (example: there would be no GoogleNews without the newspaper industry, since Google itself doesn’t create any content). But that doesn’t mean that Google should be in the news business.
Putting the content that the news media creates and the ability to find it through a search engine together under one roof compromises both sides. Google makes money when people click on adwords related to relevant search topics (and the more relevant the topic, the more money they make). Its not a huge stretch of the imagination to think that Google, if it were in the news business, would begin to make certain information, about certain issues, more easy to find. The independence of the journalism would be undermined, just as if any other corporation, or say the government, were to do its own media work. On the other side, if the news industry starts to create content that maximizes its ability to be found, we begin to lose out on the depth and variety of the different articles and stories that exist. We don’t want cookie cutter news coverage, we want rich stories and powerful insights.
This discussion reminds me a bit of the film Epic 2015, which explores the effects that the convergence of popular news aggregators with other Web 2.0 technologies like blogging, social networking and user participation may have on journalism and society at large in a hypothesized future. I don’t think that is the direction we want to go.
If Google really wants to help the newspaper industry, they can help to generate interest in the news, raise awareness and encourage participation in the events of our time. Google is passive – you have to go looking for information if you want to find it. Its just a tool. There is more than enough news content out there right now, waiting to be found, and people aren’t looking. If Google (or anyone for that matter) can get people more interested in the news, the rest should fall into place.
Brian is Managing Director of little m media which provides strategic guidance and support to organizations around the use of the internet and technology to facilitate communications, engagement, education, and mobilization.