Google Wants To Bring Local News To Communities
McClatchy and Google are partnering on an experiment to operate pop-up digital news outlets in three underserved communities. Craig Forman, the CEO, and president of McClatchy, which owns the Miami Herald and 28 other newspapers, published a blog post announcing the partnership as a way to rectify “small to mid-sized U.S. communities that don’t have access to significant local sources of news and information.”
The project will introduce three new local news operations, and three cities with populations under about 500,000 people will be selected. Called the Compass Experiment, the digital-only news operations will operate on multiple platforms and run for three years.
Google hopes that down the road, it will be able to “fund dozens of new local news websites around the country and eventually around the world.”
Under the new project, Google will assist financially while McClatchy will have full editorial control. Forman aims to come up with new approaches, utilizing the best strategies of both companies to create new models.
In a statement to the Miami Herald, Forman said that he is delighted that his company and Google are expanding their collaboration to “explore new models for independent local news and information.”
In the past, Google has supported small-scale journalism by offering free G-suite licenses to news organizations and pledging $300 million to fight fake news.
By: Maytinee Kramer
