Happy Friday! Today's Media Roundup is brought to you by Chris.

Google will start paying publishers to license content — www.axios.com

The relationship between Google and publishers is... fractious, to say the least. The search company has been accused of effectively stealing money from publishers (we disagree) by 'taking' ad revenue, while at the same time products like AMP have proven beneficial to publishers' digital growth. Now though, as Sara Fischer reports for Axios, Google is giving publishers something they've long clamoured for - it's going to start paying to license "high-quality content" as a part of a product launching later this year.

Before publishers put their pitchforks down, they might want to look at the list of caveats. For one thing, "high quality" is a judgement call, and might well include polemic or politicised publications. For another, the new product is described as an "enhanced" storytelling experience that will exist in Google News, and Google can kill it whenever it wants. There are causes for optimism in this announcment, but as ever the devil is in the details.

Facebook will show users a pop-up warning before they share an outdated story — techcrunch.com

Twitter waded into the fight about misinformation a few weeks ago with its prompt-to-read interstitial. Now, Facebook is dipping its toes in the water by showing a pop-up warning when users try to share a story that is over 90 days old. It's a genuinely good idea that tackles one of the least obvious sources of misinformation - but the really interesting thing is the promised future steps outlined in Facebook's blog.

Estimates of Covid-19’s impact on journalism fail to count freelancers — www.poynter.org

Freelance journalists are - again - getting the short end of the stick. This fantastic article from Molly McCluskey explores why the true impact of Covid-19 on journalism has been masked, arguing that "the true cost to journalism is much greater."

The dirty secret behind Ben Shapiro's extraordinary success on Facebook — popular.info

Facebook is, undeniably, a primary source of news content for millions of people. This investigation demonstrates how one right-wing news outlet games Facebook's system for disproportionate returns.

This week's episode:

Wessenden Marketing's Jim Bilton on how the pandemic has impacted newspaper and magazine retail — voices.media

Jim Bilton of Wessenden Marketing tells us about how the pandemic has impacted newspaper and magazine retail, about who might be left standing after the dust settles and how they will need to reboot their distribution strategies.

Transcripts Archives — voices.media

Did you know we do a transcript for each of our guest's interviews? It goes live a couple of days after the episode has been released, and we have a (searchable) archive of what our guests have talked about dating back over two years now.