Google partners to fund new local media sites

Re:Google partners to fund new local media sites by CM30 on Thursday March 28, 2019 @05:25PM (#19516792)

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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Re:Google partners to fund new local media sites by pas on Wednesday April 03, 2019 @06:00AM (#19562103)

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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