Four Thursday

1. Todd Ruiz, still lounging in Bangkok, has a post up about election-time agitprop in Thailand. Reporter in Exile

2. Jennifer 8 Lee talks about the potential for Google+ (Circle me, bro!). Jennifer 8 Lee

3. LA Times reporters on tweeting. LAT Readers' Rep (via Romenesko)

4. Fox News founder Roger Ailes once mused that TV was the way the GOP could get around the pesky news media: "People are lazy. With television you just sit—watch—listen. The thinking is done for you." Romenesko

Schmidt failed to conquer all of the Internet

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt regrets not dominating the social-network side of the Internet - one of the few places one can escape Google's gaze. Wired

Four before the Apocalypse

1. Icahn has newz. Poynter

2. Google gives up on news print. Boston Phoenix

3. Ebersol is out at NBC. LA Times

4. Remember the time in Tora Bora when we almost got him (long before we did) Reporter in Exile

Google wants you to "like" them, too

In response to the Facebookification of the internet, Google has decided to move ahead with a competing ubiquity initiative to keep up with the Facebook "like" button. Google calls it +1 and it sounds just vague enough to fail. But what do I know? Mashable has a description of the new feature here.

Google pushes down content farms

Google is fighting back against content farms with a change in it's search algorithm. NYT

Four in the afternoon

1. The New York Times readies its tiered paywall for launch in February. NYT

2. Could new Google search protocol weed out Patch? OJR

3. Poynter talks Twitter/Facebook mini-narratives. Poynter

4. Convict monkey escapes from cage. AP

AOL wants Yahoo

The Wall Street Journal reports that AOL and two private-equity firms have joined together to make an offer to Yahoo. The idea is to merge the two Internet companies into something better able to compete with Google. AOL and Yahoo both have invested in online news operations recently as well.

Facebook localizes the Internet with news searches

Facebook has installed a new feature that lets users search for news updates while on the site. As this post notes, it is not exactly clear how the search results are chosen, but this is expected to be a challenge to Google's efforts to expand into social networking.

Surprise! China used Google to spy on activists

Google has threatened to pull the plug on its operations in China after discovering that the emails of human rights activists had been hacked.

From AP:

The company disclosed in a blog post that it had detected a "highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China." Further investigation revealed that "a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists," Google's post said.

Google did not specifically accuse the Chinese government. But the company added that it is "no longer willing to continue censoring our results" on its Chinese search engine, as the government requires. Google says the decision could force it to shut down its Chinese site and its offices in the country.

Google kicks AP out of the house

Contract negotiations between Google and the Associated Press broke down a few weeks ago and, as a result, Google is no longer adding new AP content to its search results.

From the Business Journal:

The action apparently came before Christmas but wasn't noticed until Monday.

"We have a licensing agreement with the Associated Press that permits us to host its content on Google properties such as Google News. Some of that content is still available today," a Google spokesman said in an e-mail statement to CNNMoney. "At the moment we're not adding new hosted content from the AP."

Google lets publishers opt out*

Google will make it easier for newspaper publishers to pull their content from the Google News search engine, the Wall Street Journal reports, although the content will still show up on Google.com. The plan appears to be Google's attempt to placate the increasingly cranky media conglomerates who have seen their ad revenues drop while Google gets richer and richer.

From the WSJ:

The move, which will let publishers block their content from Google News automatically by adding code to their Web sites instead of by contacting Google through an online form, comes on the heels of Tuesday's announcement that Google will allow publishers to set a daily limit on the number of articles users can read for free through its search engine.

MediaNews owner Dean Singleton, who serves as chairman of the Associated Press, crowed a little at the offer:

"It's a signal that they're willing to work with the industry," said Mr. Singleton, whose company operates 54 daily newspapers in 11 states. "It may or may not be a shallow signal, but I take it as a positive move on their part."

*Update, 12/3: In the pages of today's Wall Street Journal, Google CEO Eric Schmidt tells newspaper publishers that they'd be better off using Google's tools than looking for lines of code to opt out:

The claim that we're making big profits on the back of newspapers also misrepresents the reality. In search, we make our money primarily from advertisements for products. Someone types in digital camera and gets ads for digital cameras. A typical news search—for Afghanistan, say—may generate few if any ads. The revenue generated from the ads shown alongside news search queries is a tiny fraction of our search revenue.

It's understandable to look to find someone else to blame. But as Rupert Murdoch has said, it is complacency caused by past monopolies, not technology, that has been the real threat to the news industry.

What we're searching for

Google Zeitgeist has listed the most searched news terms in the United States for 2009. Among the top categories were economy, health care, the Senate, green energy and the bailout.

"Swine flu" led the headline news searches, followed by "inauguration" and "Limbaugh". Queries about the bailout led to acronyms: "AIG", "TARP", and "GM" were the top three searches.

"Kennedy" was the top search among those interested in the U.S. Senate, and "Obama" led the list for queries about health care reform, with "HR 3200," the House reform bill, and "universal health care" in the second and third slot.

When it came to the economy, the top search term was "crisis", followed by "cash for clunkers". "Iceland", "California", and "recession" rounded out the top 5.

Among the issues that led to a spike in interest, "Nayda Suleman," the woman who had eight babies, topped the list. "Somali pirates" came in fourth place and "balloon boy" floated in at fifth.

Big search spikes also followed real life disasters, from the earthquake in Italy to the fires in Los Angeles.

The full GZ list is here.

(found via Nieman Journalism Lab)

Away from Google

The Associated Press provides more details about a proposal by at least three newspaper companies - News Corp., MediaNews Group and A.H. Belo - to pull some of their content from Google's search engine in favor of an exclusive partnership with Microsoft's Bing.

From AP:

In theory, getting news organizations to block Google from including links to their content might give Microsoft a slight edge over its nemesis. Bing would have a trove of material that its rival didn't, giving people more reason to search somewhere besides Google. Google handles more than six times as many Web searches as Bing, a lead that Google has translated into billions of dollars in annual revenue from ads that the company sells alongside search results.

But even if it were willing to pay for exclusive indexing rights to some newspapers, Microsoft then would have to spend heavily to make sure Web surfers knew Bing had stuff that Google didn't — and even that might not be enough to get people to break their Google habit, said Forrester Research analyst Shar VanBoskirk.

Dan Kennedy at Media Nation offers his take on the plan:

...there isn’t really any underlying principle as to who ought to pay for what online. Rather, the debate is driven by who’s making money, who’s losing money and — here’s where we get back to Microsoft — the business model of any particular Internet company.

What is Microsoft’s business interest with respect to Bing? Simply this: to build market share, establishing Bing as a serious search alternative to Google. Bing has a long way to go, with 10 percent of the market to Google’s 65 percent. That said, Bing has received good reviews since its debut earlier this year. And it’s really the only search engine to emerge as any kind of rival to Google pretty much since Google slipped into view in the late 1990s.

MediaNews, Belo want to block Google, too

MediaNews Group owner Dean Singleton said he will follow the lead of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. and block Google News from linking to stories that are put behind pay walls, Bloomberg reported today. MediaNews plans to start charging for some content at papers in Chico, California and York, Pennsylvania, and Singleton said that content would be off limits.

From Bloomberg:

“The things that go behind pay walls, we will not let Google search to, but the things that are outside the pay wall we probably will, because we want the traffic,” Singleton said.

Belo, which owns the Riverside Press-Enterprise, also announced tentative plans to charge for some online content and said it would likewise block Google from indexing those stories.

Microsoft, News Corp to challenge Google

The Financial Times reports that Microsoft and News Corp, which owns the Wall Street Journal, have joined together to challenge the dominance of Google as an aggregator of online news content.

From the FT:

Microsoft has had discussions with News Corp over a plan that would involve the media company’s being paid to “de-index” its news websites from Google, setting the scene for a search engine battle that could offer a ray of light to the newspaper industry.

...the Financial Times has learnt that Microsoft has also approached other big online publishers to persuade them to remove their sites from Google’s search engine.

...the biggest beneficiary of the tussle could be the newspaper industry, which has yet to construct a reliable online business model that adequately replaces declining print and advertising revenues.

The Wall Street Journal has long held the line against giving away all of its online content for free. Meantime, Microsoft's Bing search engine has looked for ways to compete with Google. For its part, Google told FT that newspaper content doesn't account for much online revenue. But how many more people might think "Bing" when they first sign on the Internet in the morning to look for the news (depending, of course, on how many papers follow News Corp's lead)?

Four today

1. The future's so bright, I don't need to get paid: Arianna Huffington spoke to the students at Ithaca College and told them she is absolutely positively optimistic and upbeat about the future of journalism and is, in fact, saving it. Ithacan Online

2. Time to cut: Time magazine will layoff around 12 editorial employees as part of Time Inc.'s mandate to cut 500 jobs company wide. Fortune magazine looks to be hit hardest, with 24 newsroom layoffs out of a staff of about 80. New York Post

3. Google and the media: Nieman's Zachary Seward talked to Google CEO Eric Schmitt about his love for newspapers, his definition of blog, and the coming Google Wave. Nieman Journalism Lab

4. Obama's brain: Warren Olney will interview Obama's campaign architect David Plouffe about his new book, "The Audacity to Win," and Tuesday's election results on today's "To The Point." Listen live at 12:45 p.m. Pacific here or download is later here.

Traffic cops on the information superhighway*

James Rainey landed in the Googleplex (literally and figuratively) to hear talk about the future of journalism and came away educated and emboldened that journalism as he knows it will live on the new mediascape - he seems to embrace the curator model, whereby the experienced newsroom finds and fits together in a coherent package the most important pieces of information from the web:

But amid the celebration of the multiplicities, opportunities and creative chaos of the Web, one Google executive, Bradley Horowitz, also acknowledged that consumers might be drowning in media, e-mail and the "social stream."

"Tools are needed," he declared, "to preserve your most precious asset: your attention."

So maybe, even in the age of Google, consumers are looking for someone to help cut through all the clutter to get at the important facts.

Sounds to me like they're looking for a journalist.

To be sure, the need for web editors will increase, but it's not the kind of work that's going to automatically save many journalism jobs.

There's also an issue of shifting standards and ethics. As new models emerge for delivery and digestion of news, so do new concepts for what constitutes good journalism. Already we have newspaper reporters and editors who happily sell their opinions about issues they cover. Only a few years ago they'd be fired, now they're celebrated for building "brand" identity. Will they crowd out the seemingly boring, unbranded types who want to tell it straight? Because old-school journalism isn't always the thing that attracts the most attention - turn on any television news broadcast if you don't believe me.

Still, the fact that the Internet does not have a finite number of channels or territory that can be bought up and controlled by corporate suits means that readers and writers can experiment. Hopefully many of them will come to the conclusion that watchdog journalism*, done without fear or favor, deserves our attention.

*Updated 10/4: A Pew survey finds the majority of Americans (62 percent) still support the watchdog role of the media - even though only a minority of readers (29 percent) believe the media gets the facts straight. It's no surprise that a more fragmented and opinionated media would lead to low levels of trust - it's a bit like Congress, which is hated nationally even though most incumbents get returned to office. It's as if the media these days represent factions of fact.

Google buddies up to newsrooms

After announcing a proposed platform that will allow publishers of any size to charge for content, Google has launched an experimental site called Fast Flip to gives big publishers a share of the advertising revenue from the search.

Neither of the products will save the publishing industry nor give independent bloggers and startups the kind of revenue they need to stay afloat. This does indicate, however, that Google sees a future in which people pay something for online content. In the former case, we have a farmer's market model in which smaller publishers can get something for home grown work. The latter points to a more traditional mall product, where name brands are on display.

Ken Doctor at Content Bridges has more on Fast Flip. He notes that Google, now #9 on the list of top news search engines, needed a better mousetrap. Indeed, Google may have found the ultimate cheese to lure newspapers and magazines away from all the other aggregators: revenue.

Google sets up platform to charge for news

As Nieman Journalism Lab reported yesterday, and MarketWatch picks up today, Google plans to introduce a platform that will let newspapers charge readers for content, using either a subscription or a micropayment method.

The company said of its Google Checkout proposal:

Google believes that an open web benefits all users and publishers. However, “open” need not mean free. We believe that content on the Internet can thrive supported by multiple business models — including content available only via subscription.

Newspapers have pressured Google to help them develop a way to increase revenues to make up for steep advertising losses on the print side. Whether Google Checkout can raise the kind of profits needed to keep corporate owners flush seems questionable, but this could be a solution for small and independent news sites.

Of course, the platform will be available to all web users, not just newspapers, which could turn the free flow of content into something more like a farmer's market.

YouTube wants payers

Google's YouTube plans to stream movies for a fee, putting it into direct competition with Netflix and providing the still free service with some much needed revenue.