James Fallows’ story about Google’s effort to “save the news” is interesting if a little unsatisfying. Knowing people who actually work down in Mountain View, I’ve been hearing for some time that Google had big plans for the news business. I take James Fallows to be a reliable source, and he presents the Googlers as having a genuinely optimistic tenor towards the future of journalism. For all the doomsday-speak that’s been thrown around, it’s, at the least, refreshing to hear the people behind one of the digital era’s monoliths say “we can do this.”
Fallows does a nice job of parsing through the possibilities for the future, which include not only revenue models but also interesting changes to the way content is presented to make quality news a more attractive digital product. In short, we have nothing to worry about in the long run because very smart people are working on this.
If the article has a weakness I don’t think this represents the profound shift in culture that Fallows does. For years now, interested parties have been saying that even if the busniness model of professional journalism is broken, it will be fixed because the public demands to be informed.
On the other hand, I do like the idea that the culture of innovation in Silicon Valley is coming to the journalistic enterprise. This has been said before, but never quite so eloquently and clearly as by Fallows. And it makes sense. That’s why we need journalists after all.