Thursday 5th October: Google on Trial - what does that mean for publishers?

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Now this is what I’m talking about! While Joshua Benton’s early analysis of the Trial of Google notes that any meaningful change as a result of the trial is years away at the very minimum, the fact is that there are numerous paths gradually opening up that would shake the foundations of the search engine industry. For news publishers, that’s a very exciting possibility:

“My point isn’t that Apple would be a better tech overlord. It’s that competition is a good thing, even if it’s coming from two of the richest corporations in the history of humanity. Ideas move from unthinkable to, well, thinkable. Search is a critical — for many, the critical — supplier of audience to news publishers, and the rules for how it works are frozen because of one player’s market dominance.”

There’s a lot more in the article worth exploring, particularly how the rapid rise of AI is also jimmying the cracks open for publishers to gain a stronger foothold in conversations with platforms. And that can only be good for both newspaper and the consumers they serve — so here we go. Let’s shake up the board and see where the pieces land.

You can’t eliminate bias, so this is a flawed premise from the start. Even organisations that make a concerted effort to be objective still display bias, whether that’s conscious or unconscious. It can’t be done. Which makes it all the more ludicrous that a site as spurious as The Messenger has signed a partnership with AI tool Seekr to try to flag it. The whole thing’s a joke.

We love collaborations here at Media Voices. There’s something very wholesome about naturally cutthroat journalists putting ego aside to focus on what matters: informing the public. So it’s great to see Report for the World urging more newsrooms to do just that.

Faced with the rising cost of… well, everything to do with print production and dramatic falls in print circulation, News UK and DMG Media are suggesting that they combine their print operations. As Charlotte Tobitt points out this would need clearing by the UK’s competition authority — but really it’s just an exercise in stretching out the tail of print decline both publishers are dealing with.

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