Supporting the past, ignoring the future
By Rasmus Kleis Nielsen The opinions expressed are his own.
Western media industries are going through a rapid and often painful transformation today with the rise of the Internet and mobile platforms, the erosion of the largest free-to-air broadcast audiences, and the decline of paid print newspaper circulation.
Despite all these changes, the important and sometimes neglected ways in which governments provide support for the media have remained largely unchanged for decades.
There is a real need to reform our 20th century support arrangements to make sure they effectively serve our needs in the 21st century. Public sector support for the media should not be industrial policy, propping up specific ailing incumbents, but democratic policy, aimed at ensuring that timely, accessible news from a diversity of sources is available to the entire population.
Most media companies prefer not to talk about the support they receive from their government, but all developed democracies intervene in media markets in direct and indirect ways to serve a range of public interest goals.
The most important intervention in much of Western Europe is licence fee funding for public service broadcasting, based on what is basically a ring-fenced tax on households that own television or radio receivers. The United States also provides funding for public broadcasting, but on a much more limited scale and through direct federal and state appropriations.
from The Great Debate UK:
Google juice dampens news headlines
- Mic Wright is Online News Editor at Stuff. The views expressed are his own -
Google juice – it sure isn't tasty but it is vital for anyone writing news online. The slightly irksome term refers to the mysterious combination of keywords and linking that will drag a webpage to the top of Google's search pages.
While the exact way Google's search algorithm works is largely a mystery to outsiders, news sites know it's vital to write headlines stuffed with the keywords that the search engine seeks out.
Online, the perfect punning headlines created by The Sun newspaper's super sub-editors just won't cut it. News stories on the web are all about the facts and the most successful sites are constantly checking to see what keywords will send you soaring up the Google search rankings. If you story isn't on the front page, it's not getting clicks, the less clicks you get the less likely it is that your advertisers' ads are going to get seen.
Now Google has announced that it's been working on a brand new version of its search engine and it's likely that online headlines are about to get even more straight forward. The new iteration of Google's most profitable invention is codenamed Caffeine thanks to its speediness. It has already been made available for users to test and besides the noticeable increase in speed, it appears to make search a more real time experience than we've previously seen.
The move to real time search, showing web pages in search results as soon as they appear, is a response to the instantaneous nature of Twitter which has recently got the jump on Google when it comes to breaking news. Currently there is a slight but noticeable lag with Google results – its search crawlers (programmes that scour the web to see what sites have been updated) don't grab changes immediately. But with the new version of the search engine they will.
Hi “The Bell” and Ian,
I don’t think we actually disagree on this. To put the short post into context – it was written at Schiphol airport at very short notice at Reuters’ request. I was glad to contribute but it represents a very slight comment on an issue which I could speak about for hours.
I agree that creativity remains the key in getting your news noticed. I also believe that it’s important to have a dedicated audience and to serve them well. My comment was purely on the way that Google’s search algorithms affect the craft of writing headlines. It’s moved from an art to a science in some respects.
I work on a site where quality is our biggest watch word. I have not hoisted the “white flag” nor will I ever do so. I have a background in both print and online journalism and I love good journalism. I work hard and I believe in creating great features and news stories. But as a professional working in this industry, I can’t ignore the material realities of getting things noticed online.
The Bell – I did not deny that Google search results are based on many more things than simply keywords. BUT this piece was about the affect that Google changing their approach to keywords and headlines will have. The recipe for their algorithm is a mystery in many way – very few people know everything they take in to account and how that mix is worked out. I am not afraid of Google, I am not claiming to be “with-it” or totally on the ball about everything.
However, I’m also not big on being called “mate” by anyone. You make some good points but this was a very short and quick look at a particular element of Google searches and their affect on the way news is written. I don’t make the rules nor do I believe that it’s necessary to stick to them slavishly. You clearly know your stuff but don’t presume that I’m a knumbskull. I’m not.
“New” media? The only news sites I read online – and I read a lot of it – are the online versions of print publications: newspapers, or, in the case of Reuters, a company which supplies newspapers. I read the above article without knowing exactly what the writer is advocating, as the article seemed an exercise in beating-around-the-bush; but if the article is aimed at subsidizing people who stumble off sidewalks reading twitter and obtaining their culture through torrents, I’d rather the taxpayer was not further molested.