6 ms·

Can Google fix the news industry it helped break?

yyy888sss 6y ago
I think the news industry is better than ever. Just like 50 years ago, you can watch the evening news on TV, or listen on the radio, or read the major papers (NYT, The Economist). My local paper is online now and charges a small subscription but it's still around. In addition, Google is constantly recommending me articles from hundreds of different news sites and blogs, some which are major operations and some which are just a single person. The tech giants have diverted ad dollars from the News industry but they hardly broke it...
- eptcyka 6y ago
  If it's better than ever, then why are lots of independent businesses which earn their money via journalism are going broke at a higher rate than ever?
  - ur-whale 6y ago
    Because they don't serve an actual purpose?
    - eptcyka 6y ago
      I'm just as interested in my local politicians being corrupt as I am in the corruption of the nation level ones.
      - visarga 6y ago
        Best information today flows directly from people present on the scene where events take place, through social networks. Newspapers are just second hand compiling these direct reports. Investigative journalism is useful and I think it should be sponsored by the civil society (people and NGOs). Other forms of journalism (such as opinion columns) will be paid by the various special interests or ads.
anothernewdude 6y ago
If it wasn't google it'd be something else. News was always going to have to compete with free.
yunohn 6y ago
> These products are separate from the stories that appear in Facebook newsfeeds or Google search results — the platforms should arguably pay extra for that. But... why? That’s like saying YCombinator should pay every website for the content being discussed on HackerNews. > Given that the search giant can account for more than a quarter of their traffic ... Sounds more like news organizations should be paying Goog/FB for referring users. I truly believe that this is just further proof that News Media are unwilling to innovate and would rather focus on lobbying and regulations to maintain their status quo.
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  >That’s like saying YCombinator should pay every website for the content being discussed on HackerNews. or not if you accept that there's a difference between a machine taking everything in an republishing it, and people selectively finding things from all times and posting them with most of the value being provided by the extra value of the comments.
  - yunohn 6y ago
    But Google doesn’t republish anything? Sure there’s a snippet, but that shows up on any social media website too. The full content is only on the news website.
    - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
      sorry, I was quick with the language, let us say linking to it then, but the fact remains there is quite a clear difference between what HN does and what Google does, and a law that means Google has to pay does not necessarily mean HN would have to pay. It's obvious that HN adds a lot of value whereas Google does not.
      - yunohn 6y ago
        Google search provides value by linking things that people are looking for - like any other search engine. Similar to the Yellow Pages, or any of the innumerable aggregators for things like travel, booking, shopping, etc. They do not prevent people from using the website’s own search; it’s just that almost no one does so because a general purpose search engine is more useful to them.
LatteLazy 6y ago
There are 2 key issues with this. The first is that it perpetuates the clickbait bs attention grabbing that is the bane of actual information flow. This is the opposite of what we want if newspapers are to fulfil their hoped for role in public discourse (to inform). But most of these models reward it. The second is the idea that Google is "stealing" news. One of the core issues with news is that you cannot copywrite it. When Greenwald broke the Snowden revelations, it was the result of months of hard work and investment by him, the Guardian and the Washington Post. They took significant risks, both commercially and physically. They worked through 1000s of documents, checked and double checked, talked to other sources and prepared expensive legal teams. Then hours later ever other paper on earth started printing the same news for free and selling it. How is that any different to Google etc putting ads against search. I don't know what the right model is for newspapers. But so far the only commercially viable one has been to rip off other people's actual investigatuve journalism, water it down by pandering to readers' prejudices and then sell political influence based on being able to sway readers votes. These changes will at best just continue and entrench that model. We need a whole new playing field. Plus as a bonus, when x% of your revenue comes from Google etc, it's suddenly a lot harder to criticise Google etc. I suspect, cynically, that's the real aim here: open your pocket book and we'll put down our pens (not the first time that's happened...).
- jeltz 6y ago
  Agreed, having Google pay the media seems like it would only make the incentives even more slanted towards encouraging clickbait and "stealing" content. I am not sure what the solution is but it is not this.
  - LatteLazy 6y ago
    I think France are trying to model of taxing ISPs and splitting the money among publishers. I actually like that. A extra 10£/$/€ a month isn't that much and would be quite a lot for news organisations. The issue is how to split the money. I'd want to only support investigative journalism, but that's a hard thing to define or measure...
izacus 6y ago
Hehe, should Tesla also fix German diesel car industry it's now actively breaking? Really reminds me of my old (socialist) government who kept big failing companies on a life support due to so-called "national interest". They all horribly failed right after transition because their products were completely obsolete and unable to function on a free market.
- avianlyric 6y ago
  I don’t think Tesla and the German automotive industry is a good comparison. I think free (as in speech) high quality journalism has a special place in democratic countries, which needs to be protected and funded. I don’t think the same applies to the automotive industry. I don’t disagree that old media companies have failed to innovate and modernise. But equally the impact of the internet and entities like Google and Facebook on news is undeniable. We’ve lost huge amounts of investigative journalism, both local and national. And replaced it with click bait memes that serve to drive uncritical opinions, making it easier for leaders to act with indiscretion, and get away with it.
  - izacus 6y ago
    Can you prove that the old media is any less biased and politically funded than the new one? That they actually were more politically neutral and valuable?
    - ripe 6y ago
      Clearly old media is a mixed bag. Some do spread misinformation, and those seem to be the most popular outlets today. But there is a third possible solution: sue the spreaders in civil court. Example: Fox News in October 2020 paid out millions to the family of a dead DNC staffer about whom Fox had repeatedly spread incendiary and false stories. Of course, some people will say the courts can be biased...
bjeds 6y ago
Personally I hope that the old "news industry" would just die already and be replaced by walled-off subscription services, like Netflix, specializing in different kinds of content. A monolithic "news paper" covering different areas like sports, science, politics, what's on TV today, weather and so on is not optimal in the 21:st century because distribution is easier. I'd then have subscriptions to services specializing in different kinds of content depending on interest. Because these services do not compete with free, they could spend more time on the articles and less time on hyperbole, polarization and anger - three tools that are great for growth and engagement, but detrimental to society.
- plif 6y ago
  Wouldn't an ecosystem of smaller / walled off news services promote polarization? Genuinely asking -- what you are describing strikes me as an echo chamber that may have the opposite effect.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - metreo 6y ago
    realistically what's been upset is ad purchasing behavior which realistically could be seen as the origins of media bias in the first place [i.e. literally appeasing the sponsors]
  - bjeds 6y ago
    I guess that's a chicken-egg question. What comes first: a polarized populace or free news? People who polarize are seen and heard a lot: they use free news articles on social media to spread their perspective to as many as possible, triggering a counter reaction on the other direction, also influencing the journalists because they get clicks. How wonderful it would be if none of that was free so people had to pay to read whatever has been spread. The blast radius would be limited. My gut feeling is that 80% of the world are not interested in using news instrumentally to force political views on others. They may get caught up into it, but wouldn't if they weren't continously confronted with it. It's the age old rule that 95% on internet communities lurk, and 5% post content. The 5% are more insane than average. :-) Today in 2021 people are USED to seeing free news on social media. But that's just the current status quo. Imagine a society where people did not see or share stuff like that, as seldom as people share music or tv-shows or other kinds of content? There is nothing special with "news". It just happened to be the thing that's free and constructed to make people emotional and angry. If there were only subscription services not competing with free, I think people would buy something that's as neutral and unbiased as possible.
andrew_ 6y ago
Surely more Google is not the answer at a time we're trying for less Google in all things.
- asplake 6y ago
  Google is like violence. If it's not working, there's not enough of it
moksly 6y ago
Was the news industry broken by Facebook and Google, or was it broken by the lack of regulation? In my country, actual publishers are accountable for what they report, and as such, they tend to be better sources than what you'll find on platforms that aren't regulated. This is why you're not going to find anti-vax pseudo science in a Danish news paper, but you may find it among instagram influencers or in Facebook groups. Which is the real issue. As long as we don't hold people with a public voice accountable for what they say, or regulate the platforms which allow those voices to reach billions, then we're going to be in trouble. Making Google or Facebook share some of what they earn with the news industry isn't going to change that. And why wouldn't we hold instagram influencers to the same editorial standards that we did national news papers, when those influencers have more reach? Free speech simply doesn't work without responsibility, and neither does democracy. It's completely insane that we now live in a world where we have to take science deniers seriously, and it's frankly going to ruin us. Because people aren't only spreading nonsense on social media to get rich, or because they like the attention, there are anti-democratic governments who are using our own unregulated platforms against us, in coordinated attempts to destroy western civilization. So if you want to save the news industry, don't just make Google, Facebook and every other social media platform that hides behind their own users, pay up, make them responsible for the content that they allow onto their platforms exactly like we made the news industry responsible for what they print.
- nicoburns 6y ago
  > Was the news industry broken by Facebook and Google, or was it broken by the lack of regulation? I think there's a good case that it was broken by Facebook and Google. Specifically them taking away all the ad revenue that used to go to newspapers. That's what led to traditional media outlets going out of business and/or turning to clickbait to make money.
  - moksly 6y ago
    I certainly think there is something to be said about that. Ad revenue tends to follow people though, and people flocked to the the open platforms, in part because Google, Facebook and so on, build algorithms to game the psychology of us as consumers, in ways that are illegal for traditional news papers to do. I'm not sure how we're still allowing these giant tech-companies to more or less regulate themselves in the EU. I mean, which public mandate do they have, to remove the elected president of one of the most powerful nations on earth? I'm not trying to turn this political or pro or anti Trump or even pro or anti ban, by the way. But these companies removed one of the most powerful political figures in the world from the reach of millions provided by their platforms, without asking any form of democratic institution for permission to do so. That just screams for regulation in my eyes.
mindvirus 6y ago
I really wish there was a good news subscription. I'm not going to subscribe to the tons of local papers, but I would love to support them proportional to how much I read their articles. I recall an article from a while ago that paywalls helped the rise of conspiracy theories, since it was the only free news available while quality news sources put themselves behind paywalls. It does seem we're in for a reckoning, and I don't know what the answer is - it seems the way we're headed, those who can afford it get to pay for quality news and everyone else gets free propaganda.
- snarf21 6y ago
  Well, it isn't just that. The conspiracy theory stuff drives eyeballs. The big issue is that there is barely such thing as news anymore. It is all Infotainment and the only thing that matters is ads. They have been incentivized to outrage and click-bait. Good quality news is expensive to make but people want it for free. I really don't know how to fix this conundrum. There are two ways to help this status quo in my mind. Get red of the ability to repost/retweet/etc. People are lazy and won't make their own post but a click of the button is trivial and spreads nonsense. Also, we need to start a VAT on ad revenue. If we want other models, like NPR style or Patreon style, then we need to made ads less profitable.

I think the news industry is better than ever. Just like 50 years ago, you can watch the evening news on TV, or listen on the radio, or read the major papers (NYT, The Economist). My local paper is online now and charges a small subscription but it's still around. In addition, Google is constantly recommending me articles from hundreds of different news sites and blogs, some which are major operations and some which are just a single person. The tech giants have diverted ad dollars from the News industry but they hardly broke it...

eptcyka 6y ago
If it's better than ever, then why are lots of independent businesses which earn their money via journalism are going broke at a higher rate than ever?
- ur-whale 6y ago
  Because they don't serve an actual purpose?
  - eptcyka 6y ago
    I'm just as interested in my local politicians being corrupt as I am in the corruption of the nation level ones.
    - visarga 6y ago
      Best information today flows directly from people present on the scene where events take place, through social networks. Newspapers are just second hand compiling these direct reports. Investigative journalism is useful and I think it should be sponsored by the civil society (people and NGOs). Other forms of journalism (such as opinion columns) will be paid by the various special interests or ads.

anothernewdude 6y ago

If it wasn't google it'd be something else. News was always going to have to compete with free.

yunohn 6y ago

> These products are separate from the stories that appear in Facebook newsfeeds or Google search results — the platforms should arguably pay extra for that. But... why? That’s like saying YCombinator should pay every website for the content being discussed on HackerNews. > Given that the search giant can account for more than a quarter of their traffic ... Sounds more like news organizations should be paying Goog/FB for referring users. I truly believe that this is just further proof that News Media are unwilling to innovate and would rather focus on lobbying and regulations to maintain their status quo.

bryanrasmussen 6y ago
>That’s like saying YCombinator should pay every website for the content being discussed on HackerNews. or not if you accept that there's a difference between a machine taking everything in an republishing it, and people selectively finding things from all times and posting them with most of the value being provided by the extra value of the comments.
- yunohn 6y ago
  But Google doesn’t republish anything? Sure there’s a snippet, but that shows up on any social media website too. The full content is only on the news website.
  - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    sorry, I was quick with the language, let us say linking to it then, but the fact remains there is quite a clear difference between what HN does and what Google does, and a law that means Google has to pay does not necessarily mean HN would have to pay. It's obvious that HN adds a lot of value whereas Google does not.
    - yunohn 6y ago
      Google search provides value by linking things that people are looking for - like any other search engine. Similar to the Yellow Pages, or any of the innumerable aggregators for things like travel, booking, shopping, etc. They do not prevent people from using the website’s own search; it’s just that almost no one does so because a general purpose search engine is more useful to them.

LatteLazy 6y ago

There are 2 key issues with this. The first is that it perpetuates the clickbait bs attention grabbing that is the bane of actual information flow. This is the opposite of what we want if newspapers are to fulfil their hoped for role in public discourse (to inform). But most of these models reward it. The second is the idea that Google is "stealing" news. One of the core issues with news is that you cannot copywrite it. When Greenwald broke the Snowden revelations, it was the result of months of hard work and investment by him, the Guardian and the Washington Post. They took significant risks, both commercially and physically. They worked through 1000s of documents, checked and double checked, talked to other sources and prepared expensive legal teams. Then hours later ever other paper on earth started printing the same news for free and selling it. How is that any different to Google etc putting ads against search. I don't know what the right model is for newspapers. But so far the only commercially viable one has been to rip off other people's actual investigatuve journalism, water it down by pandering to readers' prejudices and then sell political influence based on being able to sway readers votes. These changes will at best just continue and entrench that model. We need a whole new playing field. Plus as a bonus, when x% of your revenue comes from Google etc, it's suddenly a lot harder to criticise Google etc. I suspect, cynically, that's the real aim here: open your pocket book and we'll put down our pens (not the first time that's happened...).

jeltz 6y ago
Agreed, having Google pay the media seems like it would only make the incentives even more slanted towards encouraging clickbait and "stealing" content. I am not sure what the solution is but it is not this.
- LatteLazy 6y ago
  I think France are trying to model of taxing ISPs and splitting the money among publishers. I actually like that. A extra 10£/$/€ a month isn't that much and would be quite a lot for news organisations. The issue is how to split the money. I'd want to only support investigative journalism, but that's a hard thing to define or measure...

izacus 6y ago

Hehe, should Tesla also fix German diesel car industry it's now actively breaking? Really reminds me of my old (socialist) government who kept big failing companies on a life support due to so-called "national interest". They all horribly failed right after transition because their products were completely obsolete and unable to function on a free market.

avianlyric 6y ago
I don’t think Tesla and the German automotive industry is a good comparison. I think free (as in speech) high quality journalism has a special place in democratic countries, which needs to be protected and funded. I don’t think the same applies to the automotive industry. I don’t disagree that old media companies have failed to innovate and modernise. But equally the impact of the internet and entities like Google and Facebook on news is undeniable. We’ve lost huge amounts of investigative journalism, both local and national. And replaced it with click bait memes that serve to drive uncritical opinions, making it easier for leaders to act with indiscretion, and get away with it.
- izacus 6y ago
  Can you prove that the old media is any less biased and politically funded than the new one? That they actually were more politically neutral and valuable?
  - ripe 6y ago
    Clearly old media is a mixed bag. Some do spread misinformation, and those seem to be the most popular outlets today. But there is a third possible solution: sue the spreaders in civil court. Example: Fox News in October 2020 paid out millions to the family of a dead DNC staffer about whom Fox had repeatedly spread incendiary and false stories. Of course, some people will say the courts can be biased...

bjeds 6y ago

Personally I hope that the old "news industry" would just die already and be replaced by walled-off subscription services, like Netflix, specializing in different kinds of content. A monolithic "news paper" covering different areas like sports, science, politics, what's on TV today, weather and so on is not optimal in the 21:st century because distribution is easier. I'd then have subscriptions to services specializing in different kinds of content depending on interest. Because these services do not compete with free, they could spend more time on the articles and less time on hyperbole, polarization and anger - three tools that are great for growth and engagement, but detrimental to society.

plif 6y ago
Wouldn't an ecosystem of smaller / walled off news services promote polarization? Genuinely asking -- what you are describing strikes me as an echo chamber that may have the opposite effect.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- metreo 6y ago
  realistically what's been upset is ad purchasing behavior which realistically could be seen as the origins of media bias in the first place [i.e. literally appeasing the sponsors]
- bjeds 6y ago
  I guess that's a chicken-egg question. What comes first: a polarized populace or free news? People who polarize are seen and heard a lot: they use free news articles on social media to spread their perspective to as many as possible, triggering a counter reaction on the other direction, also influencing the journalists because they get clicks. How wonderful it would be if none of that was free so people had to pay to read whatever has been spread. The blast radius would be limited. My gut feeling is that 80% of the world are not interested in using news instrumentally to force political views on others. They may get caught up into it, but wouldn't if they weren't continously confronted with it. It's the age old rule that 95% on internet communities lurk, and 5% post content. The 5% are more insane than average. :-) Today in 2021 people are USED to seeing free news on social media. But that's just the current status quo. Imagine a society where people did not see or share stuff like that, as seldom as people share music or tv-shows or other kinds of content? There is nothing special with "news". It just happened to be the thing that's free and constructed to make people emotional and angry. If there were only subscription services not competing with free, I think people would buy something that's as neutral and unbiased as possible.

andrew_ 6y ago

Surely more Google is not the answer at a time we're trying for less Google in all things.

asplake 6y ago
Google is like violence. If it's not working, there's not enough of it

moksly 6y ago

Was the news industry broken by Facebook and Google, or was it broken by the lack of regulation? In my country, actual publishers are accountable for what they report, and as such, they tend to be better sources than what you'll find on platforms that aren't regulated. This is why you're not going to find anti-vax pseudo science in a Danish news paper, but you may find it among instagram influencers or in Facebook groups. Which is the real issue. As long as we don't hold people with a public voice accountable for what they say, or regulate the platforms which allow those voices to reach billions, then we're going to be in trouble. Making Google or Facebook share some of what they earn with the news industry isn't going to change that. And why wouldn't we hold instagram influencers to the same editorial standards that we did national news papers, when those influencers have more reach? Free speech simply doesn't work without responsibility, and neither does democracy. It's completely insane that we now live in a world where we have to take science deniers seriously, and it's frankly going to ruin us. Because people aren't only spreading nonsense on social media to get rich, or because they like the attention, there are anti-democratic governments who are using our own unregulated platforms against us, in coordinated attempts to destroy western civilization. So if you want to save the news industry, don't just make Google, Facebook and every other social media platform that hides behind their own users, pay up, make them responsible for the content that they allow onto their platforms exactly like we made the news industry responsible for what they print.

nicoburns 6y ago
> Was the news industry broken by Facebook and Google, or was it broken by the lack of regulation? I think there's a good case that it was broken by Facebook and Google. Specifically them taking away all the ad revenue that used to go to newspapers. That's what led to traditional media outlets going out of business and/or turning to clickbait to make money.
- moksly 6y ago
  I certainly think there is something to be said about that. Ad revenue tends to follow people though, and people flocked to the the open platforms, in part because Google, Facebook and so on, build algorithms to game the psychology of us as consumers, in ways that are illegal for traditional news papers to do. I'm not sure how we're still allowing these giant tech-companies to more or less regulate themselves in the EU. I mean, which public mandate do they have, to remove the elected president of one of the most powerful nations on earth? I'm not trying to turn this political or pro or anti Trump or even pro or anti ban, by the way. But these companies removed one of the most powerful political figures in the world from the reach of millions provided by their platforms, without asking any form of democratic institution for permission to do so. That just screams for regulation in my eyes.

mindvirus 6y ago

I really wish there was a good news subscription. I'm not going to subscribe to the tons of local papers, but I would love to support them proportional to how much I read their articles. I recall an article from a while ago that paywalls helped the rise of conspiracy theories, since it was the only free news available while quality news sources put themselves behind paywalls. It does seem we're in for a reckoning, and I don't know what the answer is - it seems the way we're headed, those who can afford it get to pay for quality news and everyone else gets free propaganda.

snarf21 6y ago
Well, it isn't just that. The conspiracy theory stuff drives eyeballs. The big issue is that there is barely such thing as news anymore. It is all Infotainment and the only thing that matters is ads. They have been incentivized to outrage and click-bait. Good quality news is expensive to make but people want it for free. I really don't know how to fix this conundrum. There are two ways to help this status quo in my mind. Get red of the ability to repost/retweet/etc. People are lazy and won't make their own post but a click of the button is trivial and spreads nonsense. Also, we need to start a VAT on ad revenue. If we want other models, like NPR style or Patreon style, then we need to made ads less profitable.