Media stories of note for Thursday, March 28, 2013:

Danny Sullivan, writing for SearchEngineLand, notes that Google has weighed into the controversy involving content sponsored by advertisers that commingles with news. It wants publishers to segregate this non-news content carefully so that it does not end up as part of what Google News ranks. If they don't, Google is threatening to exclude their organizations from Google News, a measure that would significantly affect their traffic and referrals. 

Add Portugal to the list of countries whose news organizations are asking Google to compensate them for running their content through its search engine.  News organizations in Portugal are suffering their worst economic results in 40 years. Google has rejected the initial demands, Reuters reports, but negotiations are continuing. Google has struck support deals in other European countries in recent months.

R.B. Brenner, writing for Poynter.org, provides a tip sheet on how newsrooms can create plans to deal with breaking news. He cites editors' ideas, among them: focus on roles, not personnel; think across platforms and how you want information to flow from the newsroom; be iterative; look for non-journalistic help; practice the plan; conduct postmortems.
 
 

Google has today introduced advertising based on user interests and tendencies online. The implications are significant in the advertising sphere --- and by extension the content business --- in linking people with their core activities and interests on the basis of their (Cdn spelling) behaviour.

The New York Times writes on the initiative, noting the criticism on its relationship to online privacy. Google says it will permit users to edit the information gathered on their preferences, presumably to permit a personal firewall.

Testing will begin shortly with a select number of advertisers.

 

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