Google Agrees To $250 Million Deal To Fund California Newsrooms, AI (politico.com) 33
Google has reached a groundbreaking deal with California lawmakers to contribute millions to local newsrooms, aiming to support journalism amid its decline as readers migrate online and advertising dollars evaporate. The agreement also includes a controversial provision for artificial intelligence funding. Politico reports: California emulated a strategy that other countries like Canada have used to try and reverse the journalism industry's decline as readership migrated online and advertising dollars evaporated. [...] Under the deal, the details of which were first reported by POLITICO on Monday, Google and the state of California would jointly contribute a minimum of $125 million over five years to support local newsrooms through a nonprofit public charity housed at UC Berkeley's journalism school. Google would contribute at least $55 million, and state officials would kick in at least $70 million. The search giant would also commit $50 million over five years to unspecified "existing journalism programs."
The deal would also steer millions in tax-exempt private dollars toward an artificial intelligence initiative that people familiar with the negotiations described as an effort to cultivate tech industry buy-in. Funding for artificial intelligence was not included in the bill at the core of negotiations, authored by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks. The agreement has drawn criticism from a journalists' union that had so far championed Wicks' effort. Media Guild of the West President Matt Pearce in an email to union members Sunday evening said such a deal would entrench "Google's monopoly power over our newsrooms." "This public-private partnership builds on our long history of working with journalism and the local news ecosystem in our home state, while developing a national center of excellence on AI policy," said Kent Walker, chief legal officer for Alphabet, the parent company of Google.
Media Guild of the West President Matt Pearce wasn't so chipper. He criticized the plan in emails with union members, calling it a "total rout of the state's attempts to check Google's stranglehold over our newsrooms."
The deal would also steer millions in tax-exempt private dollars toward an artificial intelligence initiative that people familiar with the negotiations described as an effort to cultivate tech industry buy-in. Funding for artificial intelligence was not included in the bill at the core of negotiations, authored by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks. The agreement has drawn criticism from a journalists' union that had so far championed Wicks' effort. Media Guild of the West President Matt Pearce in an email to union members Sunday evening said such a deal would entrench "Google's monopoly power over our newsrooms." "This public-private partnership builds on our long history of working with journalism and the local news ecosystem in our home state, while developing a national center of excellence on AI policy," said Kent Walker, chief legal officer for Alphabet, the parent company of Google.
Media Guild of the West President Matt Pearce wasn't so chipper. He criticized the plan in emails with union members, calling it a "total rout of the state's attempts to check Google's stranglehold over our newsrooms."
Only makes sense... (Score:2)
not to kill the Golden Goose they have bene relying on for content
I have to wonder if this, in any way, will reverse the trend towards newsmedia consolidation and allow for more local voices to be heard in reporting
Re: Only makes sense... (Score:2)
So what happens when Google is split up? Then where do they get their funding? Or what happens when Google decides you don't get to join the news cartel because you gave pixel a negative review once?
Or is this just a new internet where, in order to start a search engine, you have to make deals with every individual website, starting with Reddit?
Hmm...Nah, we all know all news sites are unbiased, and journalists are never dishonest. Nothing can possibly go wrong here.
Back to you Jan.
No, it's politicans need a PLATFORM (Score:4, Insightful)
Facing facts:
- Politicians need all of the venues to get attention in.
- News media is tilted towards issues and viewpoints and promotes causes Google agrees with, promotes and endorses.
- Both politicians, big tech social media, and government need a constant stream of crisis, victim narratives, class strife, bleeding heart, divide voters by gender/race/age/demographic and a whole host of issues to keep their constituents voting the right way, buying the right products, over consuming, and complaining.
- Less media and reporting jobs means that 'make-work' and repeating the same 3 talking points as a regular news item will be less seen by voters.
If they stop running crisis news stories such as 'issue X, group Y most affected' younger persons will not know about it.
It's about keeping the narratives alive and perpetuating them given that they've had decades of convincing the boomers that the issues will always be top of the list of most dire crisis items.
It's like the local news paper/TV reporting every single day on the front page that 'a house burned down, with X people dead and injured'. Eventually, given nationwide coverage, demand for buying houses will go down.
The news media/TV does that right now with pushing negative stories about teenage boys 99 out of 100 days and then throwing in a 1 in 100 day, he sacrificed and risked his life to save his little sister news story.
Re: No, it's politicans need a PLATFORM (Score:2)
This post is an interesting case study in the early stages of conspiratorial thinking.
Google needs journalists to stick around because so much of their business model depends on what they do. Web searches, digital ads, AI training, etc. It really is no more complicated than that.
This is like a timber company planting trees.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: No, it's politicans need a PLATFORM (Score:2)
You are only thinking about one half of what Google cares about. Traditional journalists do not just capture events, they describe them using tools and methods specifically designed to allow Google to best understand that content. Everything they write is input into CMSes that structure the information in accordance to Google metadata standards.
What you are describing is social media. Google gets a piece of that pie with YouTube, but extracting reliable information from random sources is much more difficult
Re: (Score:2)
It won't. Public-private partnerships like this tend to give veto power to the private part of the partnership. What this will lead to is the same sad newspapers we all know and love, regurgitating the same copy pasted stories from the AP wire. Only difference being google is going to cut funding to newspapers that don't generate enough clicks or ones that copy-paste stories google doesn't like.
More money for AI [Re:Only makes sense...] (Score:3)
I think that they buried the lede on this.
The story here is that Google is paying news organizations 55 million dollars to get them to have AI, instead of journalists, write the news.
Does news need more government influence & AI? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
What makes you think local news orginzations have a bloated workforce?
Local newspapers aren't dying anymore - they're dead. The few that survive are rare anomalies unless they serve a large metropolitan area. Others survive as zombies, running 1 or 2 local news stories written by a tiny staff and then the rest is just news that the conglomerate that owns them prints in all of its papers across the country.
I've been to TV stations where there are only 2-3 people behind the camera (actually nobody literally b
Re: (Score:2)
Seems like instead of government throwing money at media organizations and promoting AI tools, it would be better to let news organizations scale down their bloated workforce,
Not sure what world you're living in. In the one I'm in, news organizations have been stripped their workforce to the bone. Their income sources have mostly moved to the internet, and fewer and fewer people are paying to get newpapers, since they can get news free on the internet (thanks in no small measure to google news).
, as well as focus on truthful reporting of objective facts through real journalism.
That requires journalists. So, which do you want? You want news organizations to continue to scale down and fire their reporters (like they've been doing), or you want more reporters?
Oh Good (Score:1)
Google can now completely destroy^H^H^H^H^H control all journalism.
What could go wrong?
Nothing compared to what they paid Apple. (Score:2)
Wait, why is this only to California? Never fucking mind.
Re: (Score:2)
It's in California because California is the one who sued them. If another state wanted money they could have gotten in on the action, but instead they're too busy handing over money to the tech-bros, and their Animal Farm rewrite of the promise of the internet, that "information wants to be free-as-in-freedom", to the almost polar opposite "information wants to be free-as-in-beer", which let the tech-bro companies like Google steal all of the newspapers' previously paid content, put it all online, and pock
Umm.. (Score:1)
Re:Umm.. (Score:5, Insightful)
When it comes to local news, what industry?
Recently my town had a ballot question on funding schools and there were competing letters to the editor making conflicting claims about the school budget. Twenty years ago that paper would have had a reporter paid to go out and actually find out the facts, but now there's no actual reporting, just opinion writing. So it was a "choose your adventure" scenario for voters; people voted based on what their preconceptions were.
This is just an extreme version of what's happened to bigger papers; they still have *some* reporters, but they are shockingly thin. Basically they have the same amount of "opinion journalism" as they did twenty or thirty years ago, and they reprint national news service content, but the most vital part of what they used to do -- original local journalism -- is almost gone.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, someone with an subject area expertise would be great. That's what big city newspapers have "desks" (or "bureaus") for. A desk is an individual or small team with special focus on some area like business, fashion and lifestyle, science, and of course sports.
But that's a lot more advanced than what I'm talking about. I'm talking about simply having people on staff whose job it is to find out things happening locally or to verify political claims about local events. Is it true the school board miss
Re: (Score:2)
You do not seem to understand how journalism works.
The reporter intelligently interviews experts in specialized fields until they understand the issues involved, then they present that understanding to the public in terms their readers can understand. Some amount of education of the reporter is involved, but reporters do not need to get a masters degree in architecture before they can discuss the new drain spouts City Hall wants to install.
AI needs money? (Score:2)
No thanks! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The Groundwork received payments of $136,131 during the third quarter, bringing its total payments from Clinton’s campaign up to $313,349. It is the single highest-paid provider of technology services to the campaign in the quarter
https://qz.com/526171/hillary-... [qz.com]
“He’s ready to fund, advise recruit talent, etc. He was more deferential on structure than I expected. Wasn’t pushing to run through one of his existing firms. Clearly wants to be head outside advisor, but didn’t seem like he wanted to push others out. Clearly wants to get going. He’s still in DC tomorrow and would like to meet with you if you are in DC in the afternoon. I think it’s worth doing.”
https://qz.com/823922/eric-sch... [qz.com]
"There is what I call the creepy line. The Google policy on a lot of things is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it." - Eric Schmidt
https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]
Given his clear bias, did the company follow? Many conservatives believe the company is mostly liberal. Why would Google give money to local news? It doesn't appear to improve their bottom line or benefit their shareholders. Looks like they are trying to remake the world in their
Re: (Score:2)
Eric Schmidt, former head of Google, left in 2016 to found "The Groundwork" with the goal of getting Hillary Clinton elected.
Sort of. The Groundwork was a company set up to provide technology services to political campaigns. The Clinton campaign was a client.
The Groundwork received payments of $136,131 during the third quarter, bringing its total payments from Clinton’s campaign up to $313,349. It is the single highest-paid provider of technology services to the campaign in the quarter
So, the Clinton campaign was paying the consulting company for services. Yeah, that's the way campaign consulting companies work.
And $313,349 may sound like a scary big number to you, but it is barely round-off error compared to the cost of the campaign, estimated at $884 million (and the Trump campaign a similar amount).
Re: (Score:1)
Jfc and they're locking in their propaganda empire with AI which is "insightful and unbiased"
Who owns those newsrooms? (Score:4, Interesting)
How "local" is local? (Score:5, Informative)
pipers all (Score:2)
He who pays the piper calls the tune.
Let's look at the Numbers (Score:1)