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GOOGLEVISION: Blogs, citizen journalism, personalised web newspapers, links to the global press. There's just one question: who'll pay for it? NEW MEDIA: THE FUTURE OF THE INTERNET
(The Sunday Herald Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)NEWSPAPERS need to get serious about the internet and put their readers first. That will be the message from the man who invented Google News, at the International Press Institute Congress in Edinburgh this afternoon.
Krishna Bharat, principal scientist of Google, told the Sunday Herald: "There are exceptions, but most newspaper websites have only mapped out what they were in print. Readers' thirst for information is not quenched by that."
In a session about the rise of internet journalism, Bharat will list a range of ways for newspapers to adapt. Given that Google News is being viewed increasingly suspiciously in the newspaper industry and many newspaper groups are still wary of over-committing to the internet, these are likely to make some people distinctly uneasy.
First, Bharat will say newspapers should create links to other stories both in their papers and other titles to "deepen the reading experience".
Second, they should focus on personalisation, something that Google News is already exploring. The service already lets you create your own news category to add to the existing ones, by telling Google News which subjects interest you.
Google has also developed a service that learns from the types of news you and others with similar interests read and then uses that to rank stories you are likely to find interesting.
"These opportunities could be implemented by any newspaper. There's no reason why my [internet] newspaper should look exactly like yours, " says Bharat.
He also believes that newspapers should open their archives to the internet to unlock their potential as research tools, linking with reference sites such as the interactive encyclopaedia, Wikipedia.
Looking to the future, Bharat will say that newspapers need to reconsider the relationship between the reader and the sources of a story. In a suggestion likely to unsettle editors, he says: "Newspapers still have a traditional process by which they gather information and represent the sources to stories through quotations and interpretations.
"We haven't managed it yet, but the internet has the ability to let the reader and the source connect and interact first hand."
Whether this is a development that would be good for the reader will be a matter of a lot of debate.
Citizen journalism will also be high on his agenda. This has already seen television stations making way for viewers with video clips, and newspapers facing new competition from blogs and gossip sites such as Popbitch.
Bharat warns that if newspapers do not embrace citizen journalism soon, it may be too late. He says: "Most bloggers are not trying to be reporters. They are trying to interpret what's happening in the world and point people to interesting information.
"It's a relatively small fraction who are trying to report news, but one thing we have learned is that things grow very fast.
"The news industry has to recognise this. Maybe it creates an opportunity with citizen journalists who want to collaborate, " he says.
As an example he points to the US cable channel Current TV, which exists to broadcast clips that viewers have made themselves.
Whether or not the industry needs a wake-up call, these pronouncements are likely to be met with one big question this afternoon: in an era of declining circulations and dwindling budgets, how are news organisations expected to pay for these things?
Many citizen journalists might be happy to send in clips to TV stations for free, but regular collaborators will want to be paid.
Similarly, why should newspapers spend the necessary money to make their archives available? And will it be worth paying for facilities like personalisation or helping readers and sources interact?
Bharat's answer is that Google has no position on whether internet content should be free. "We have a solution for newspapers, which is content advertising. This enables you to create ads that actually match the content of the news article.
"We are happy to help in that respect. Whatever monetisation strategies people come up with, we would like to work with you, " he says, although you can bet this will not come cheap.
Bharat is also likely to face questions this afternoon about Google's plans for Google News. Where his company was once seen as the saviour of the internet, it is increasingly seen as the bad guy.
In an echo of what happened to Microsoft in the 1990s, a growing band of detractors complain about its attempts to have a hand in everything.
Google News is a prime example.
Since it launched in 2002 this news aggregator has elbowed its way into the top division of media brands.
Many news organisations are unhappy about it, complaining it has become an all-consuming competitor to other news websites.
Last year a Californian blog site, Robinsloan. com, forecast a nightmare scenario involving Google developing software that created stories by cobbling parts of others together. In this vision, computers would author content and undermine newspapers completely.
BEFORE we get anywhere near this point, the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) is now trying to persuade international bodies that Google should have to pay royalties to organisations for the stories it carries.
Back in March, WAN president Gavin O'Reilly accused Google of trying to build its business "on the back of kleptomania".
Asked whether Google is now likely to start coughing up for stories, Bharat says: "This stems from a misunderstanding of the role we are playing.
"We take people to the content and news organisations benefit from the traffic. I don't see that as competing with news providers."
But hold on. Not only can people use Google News to glance at stories instead of visiting individual newspaper sites, it also means everyone is up against a wider range of competitors.
If The Times has written a story about the World Cup, it is up against not only the usual UK suspects but whichever other newspapers Google News lists from around the world.
Bharat counters that this is a two-way street. The Times might have more competition, but there will be just as many American readers who might click there instead of whichever title they would normally read. "The net effect is neutral, " he claims.
But what about blogs and magazine sites? Google News carries stories that appear on these as well, which is helping to further blur the line between bloggers and journalists. By levelling the playing field between the two, is Google not giving bloggers a massive helping hand in building their brands?
Bharat says it is not as simple as that.
Google News actually carries "very few" blogs, selecting only those that have some sort of "editorial process".
It decides this by the reassuringly oldfashioned way of ringing up producers and asking questions, plus looking at the site to understand how it operates.
The idea is that Slate. com would be carried but One Man And His Blog might not.
IPI delegates should not expect Bharat to have much to say about Google News's future this afternoon, however. He refuses to answer whether Google might launch an op-ed section which could threaten to make the likes of The Guardian's Comment Is Free or The Huffington Post redundant.
Nor will he say whether or at what point Google might introduce video clips to the news service (they are already available elsewhere), or start charging readers for certain areas.
But one thing he does make clear is that he does not believe the Californian nightmare scenario is ever going to happen.
"That would detract from our role as the trusted intermediary to help people find information. The moment we do that, we start competing with the content providers, " he says.
"Second, computers are not good at that. They are good at finding information, but not creating it."
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