Peter Bale - curated media news - Google in Spain; Times ed sees golden age; Facebook various; ByteDance under attack; TVNZ-RNZ and more
Seems a sensible solution to go back after seven years out of the market with Google News. They clearly needed the clarity over copyright, more detail in the item below from Google's own blog.
Google News will soon be available once again in Spain
John was one of my bosses at The Times & The Sunday Times. He is a survivor in that dangerous atmosphere and has proven to be a master of self-reinvention. He understands what it means to put a reporter into danger and to lose them in a war. He is a news person as well as a News Corp person. He has also presided over genuine innovation. Then again, there are other views, as the amusing-if-nasty piece below suggests.
Latest in the amazing ongoing saga of remarkable Chinese tech success stories being reined in by the communist party.
Offer is for 64% of DMGT, which also publishes the i and Metro, that Rothermeres do not already own
I doubt this will mean much to the publications but it may signal something of an end in corporate innovation at DMGT which has made a remarkable set of investments -- not all paying off -- and been brave and innovative.
It's "TBD" at this point whether the newsletters will include ads.
It is remarkable to me how newsletters -- including this one -- have reinvented email as a vehicle for news. There has been some nauseatingly self-referential nonsense about some of these moves but there's no doubt that along with podcasts (which I admit I also underestimated) that the newsletter area is great for good journalism -- especially commentary.
Journalists and whistleblowers are being targeted by expensive lawsuits to stop them working.
This is such a critical area and has a huge influence in where investigative journalism groups can survive. I have had malefactors try to use various jurisdictions and vexatious cases to try to destroy or weaken the resolve of organisations I have been involved in.
Interesting gesture and maybe not much more than that since at least one major New Zealand publisher, Stuff (where I have been consulting), is reluctant to embrace anything from Facebook and only recently went back on the platform to get across factual Covid information to hard-to-reach audiences. I believe publishers need to be on the platform. [You know from previous disclosures that I have also consulted to Facebook in Europe.]
This is a truly fascinating story with resonance beyond New Zealand to other countries -- say Austria and Australia -- where public broadcasters are under some threat from politicians and from market forces. I have some doubts about merging these two existing and pretty good publicly owned services -- on TV and radio -- but maybe a joint Internet future is what they need. I suspect they will at least merge news operations.
Modest but excellent investments. Hope some of these people are also developed into editors.