Richard Gingras, Google vice president of news, was interviewed last night at an event at Google’s HQ in Sydney by Gaven Morris, head of news at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). Tori Maguire, who works for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, opened proceedings representing the Online News Association, which had organised the event. This is a partial recount of events as they took place, and any conversation that is provided here is as accurate as I was able to make it. Some words that were used have of course been left out because of system constraints. A video of the event was made and broadcast on the ONA’s Facebook page. That video might subsequently be able to be viewed on the association’s website.
Gaven Morris opened the conversation by saying, “You’re endlessly optimistic about the future of news.” Gingras said that technology establishes the ground rules. The internet gives you distribution access that you might not have had before. The question to ask is, “Can I participate in public discourse?” He said the new paradigm was “extraordinary”. “We will get to that optimistic future through innovation. There is a great opportunity to evolve new journalistic models.” He also noted that the past wasn’t necessarily a perfect model.
GM: You think legacy media organisations have been lazy and haven’t adapted.
RG: No. I don’t criticise legacy media organisations for not seeing how dramatic the change was. Many legacy publishers looked at the internet as an interesting distribution means but didn’t see that the internet created a new marketplace for information and services. Google’s search ads do not correlate with the demise of the media’s business model. Behaviours in the community have changed and revenues went with it.
GM: The problem is not as simple as the duopoly (Google and Facebook) but the duopoly has had an impact by distorting markets.
RG: Online marketplaces have a combined market value of 25 billion US dollars. Taxes? We follow local law. It’s not fair to say Google should pay more taxes.
GM: How do you expect existing media companies to fund journalism when you have disruption?
RG: Embedded players are not necessarily the most successful in the new generation. There will be new players. None of it happens overnight. Village Media in eastern Canada is an example of a new player that is being successful. They operate in nine cities. There is now a lower cost of participation and entry.
GM: We see in five years all ad revenue coming to Google.
RG: We will continue to innovate in our own businesses.
GM: But your revenue will go up.
RG: We want it to go up, Nothing is forever. Our business is in search. Who says that will be there in five years? I used to work for a search engine named Excite and at the time we wanted to beat Yahoo, then Google came along.
RG: I’m less concerned about the sustainability of national news organisations than of the sustainability of local news organisations. Some people are looking at the news business in new ways. A subscription model is healthy. Bristol Cable for example does lots of audience engagement. They have a membership model not a paywall. We want to nurture local models to make it easy for others to follow.
GM: In Google News Initiative there is a plan to elevate and strengthen quality journalism. Why not build a model for local outlets to get a greater share of revenue?
RG: We have search ads. Also, display ads. The revenue share for display ads is 70 percent to participants.
GM: Why not reward good content directly?
RG: Who determines what is quality content?
GM: You have algorithms for that.
RG: Maybe. I’m loathe for Google to judge what is good journalism.
GM: We want Google to weed out the rubbish.
RG: Authoritative stuff goes to the top. We send billions of visits to news sites each month. Value is already associated with the search ranking. Through the division of traffic Google is already favouring quality content.
GM: It is an open web.
RG: We are a child of the open web. It’s important for us to be transparent about algorithms. We have a 160-page public document that guides Google on authoritativeness. Since the day we started people have been trying to game the algorithms. Fake news is evidence of people gaming the algorithms. But we get criticised for both sharing data and on account of privacy.
GM: How will AI come into play? Will it be involved in serving news to us?
RG: Personalised recommendations can be helpful. All publishers are looking to tune their service with personalisation. But you have to tell people when something is personalised. And why is it personalised, then give them some ability to control it.
GM: Another problem we see in the world today is governments controlling information that their citizens can see on the internet. It is impossible to get truth reported in places like Burma, for example. Journalists don’t know what to do about it,
RG: There is more populism in the world along with a demise of open societies. The internet is a positive thing but some regimes control it.
RG: There has been disruption in the past of course. TV created the modern American newspaper. It had a different ad model. In the 50s and 60s thousands of newspapers closed. We need to rethink everything about the model. How to take advantage of data journalism is one way. Also, there is little market research done by media entities. Usage data alone is not enough because it doesn’t tell you what people value.
GM: Can you (personally) win inside Google?
RG: There is no intrinsic understanding of media by engineers. Collaboration with industry is valuable. It helps executives and engineers at Google to understand the media. We have the open ecosystem of expression that Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat has talked about. The internet has enabled free expression more than any other technology. Fake news is however driving efforts to constrain free expression around the world. (Gingras recounted how he met with a European who wanted him to help him to clamp down on bloggers.)
There was one audience question about filter bubbles.
RG: Media literacy is important. The question of schools often comes up in this regard but this is not the only source of a response to the challenge.
Gaven Morris opened the conversation by saying, “You’re endlessly optimistic about the future of news.” Gingras said that technology establishes the ground rules. The internet gives you distribution access that you might not have had before. The question to ask is, “Can I participate in public discourse?” He said the new paradigm was “extraordinary”. “We will get to that optimistic future through innovation. There is a great opportunity to evolve new journalistic models.” He also noted that the past wasn’t necessarily a perfect model.
GM: You think legacy media organisations have been lazy and haven’t adapted.
RG: No. I don’t criticise legacy media organisations for not seeing how dramatic the change was. Many legacy publishers looked at the internet as an interesting distribution means but didn’t see that the internet created a new marketplace for information and services. Google’s search ads do not correlate with the demise of the media’s business model. Behaviours in the community have changed and revenues went with it.
GM: The problem is not as simple as the duopoly (Google and Facebook) but the duopoly has had an impact by distorting markets.
RG: Online marketplaces have a combined market value of 25 billion US dollars. Taxes? We follow local law. It’s not fair to say Google should pay more taxes.
GM: How do you expect existing media companies to fund journalism when you have disruption?
RG: Embedded players are not necessarily the most successful in the new generation. There will be new players. None of it happens overnight. Village Media in eastern Canada is an example of a new player that is being successful. They operate in nine cities. There is now a lower cost of participation and entry.
GM: We see in five years all ad revenue coming to Google.
RG: We will continue to innovate in our own businesses.
GM: But your revenue will go up.
RG: We want it to go up, Nothing is forever. Our business is in search. Who says that will be there in five years? I used to work for a search engine named Excite and at the time we wanted to beat Yahoo, then Google came along.
RG: I’m less concerned about the sustainability of national news organisations than of the sustainability of local news organisations. Some people are looking at the news business in new ways. A subscription model is healthy. Bristol Cable for example does lots of audience engagement. They have a membership model not a paywall. We want to nurture local models to make it easy for others to follow.
GM: In Google News Initiative there is a plan to elevate and strengthen quality journalism. Why not build a model for local outlets to get a greater share of revenue?
RG: We have search ads. Also, display ads. The revenue share for display ads is 70 percent to participants.
GM: Why not reward good content directly?
RG: Who determines what is quality content?
GM: You have algorithms for that.
RG: Maybe. I’m loathe for Google to judge what is good journalism.
GM: We want Google to weed out the rubbish.
RG: Authoritative stuff goes to the top. We send billions of visits to news sites each month. Value is already associated with the search ranking. Through the division of traffic Google is already favouring quality content.
GM: It is an open web.
RG: We are a child of the open web. It’s important for us to be transparent about algorithms. We have a 160-page public document that guides Google on authoritativeness. Since the day we started people have been trying to game the algorithms. Fake news is evidence of people gaming the algorithms. But we get criticised for both sharing data and on account of privacy.
GM: How will AI come into play? Will it be involved in serving news to us?
RG: Personalised recommendations can be helpful. All publishers are looking to tune their service with personalisation. But you have to tell people when something is personalised. And why is it personalised, then give them some ability to control it.
GM: Another problem we see in the world today is governments controlling information that their citizens can see on the internet. It is impossible to get truth reported in places like Burma, for example. Journalists don’t know what to do about it,
RG: There is more populism in the world along with a demise of open societies. The internet is a positive thing but some regimes control it.
RG: There has been disruption in the past of course. TV created the modern American newspaper. It had a different ad model. In the 50s and 60s thousands of newspapers closed. We need to rethink everything about the model. How to take advantage of data journalism is one way. Also, there is little market research done by media entities. Usage data alone is not enough because it doesn’t tell you what people value.
GM: Can you (personally) win inside Google?
RG: There is no intrinsic understanding of media by engineers. Collaboration with industry is valuable. It helps executives and engineers at Google to understand the media. We have the open ecosystem of expression that Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat has talked about. The internet has enabled free expression more than any other technology. Fake news is however driving efforts to constrain free expression around the world. (Gingras recounted how he met with a European who wanted him to help him to clamp down on bloggers.)
There was one audience question about filter bubbles.
RG: Media literacy is important. The question of schools often comes up in this regard but this is not the only source of a response to the challenge.
Gingras is on the left in the photo.
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