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.

Here are some media stories of note for Friday, February 22, 2013:

Given that Google's large search engine is in turn an engine for news site traffic, an understanding of its algorithm to rate content is essential to a site's success. Computerworld has examined Google's latest patent application that reveals the elements of what it gauges in ranking site content. There are no particular surprises, as it might be expected: the site's productivity, article length, deemed importance, speed, staff size, circulation, originality, style, diversity and breadth of coverage all factor in the ranking, among other things.

Magazine editor Ann Friedman, writing for the Columbia Journalism Review, argues it's time to stop pronouncing the death of print. Many print outlets continue to thrive, she notes. Rather, it's time to simply recognize the end of the primacy of print.

Tom Rosenstiel, the veteran news executive and head of the American Press Institute, writes regularly for Poynter Online. His latest involves what he describes as the twin delusions of the White House and the press corps. The latter has complained that the Obama Administration has managed to avoid major newspaper interviews and focused instead on local and digital sessions. Rosenstiel, who interviews extensively for the column, concludes it is wrong for the White House to think it can bypass major media and wrong for the press corps to believe it is somehow the lone gatekeeper.

ReadWrite evaluates the new Twitter API and argues it's a game-changer on breaking news. The new search capabilities announced this week send breaking information to Amazon, which then (with human help) categorizes it (in context) and permits Twitter to then create relevant streams of news. 


AdWeek responds to Henry Blodget's transparency about his Business Insider's consumer data. It  suggests digital transparency is an extension of the open culture of technology firms and that providing analytics to consumers is helpful in building trust.  AdWeek notes that other sites have made this data a strong part of their presentations online.

Craig Silverman, writing for the Poynter Institute, recounts the talk last week by Google's head of news and social products, Richard Gingras, on the need to rethink journalism. Gingras doesn't believe in transformation because it limits capabilities. Instead, he argues, journalists need to create companies with "zero baggage" from earlier eras.