The world is searching for information, and journalists are performing vital work to keep their communities informed. As we reflect on the past month, we celebrate and continue to support that work.

Supporting journalists with resources to cover coronavirus (COVID-19)

We committed $6.5 million to help combat coronavirus misinformation around the globe. This funding will be used to support fact-checkers and nonprofits, increase their access to primary sources of information, and more. 

The Google News Initiative Training Center has been updated with online resources— including data journalism and verification tools in 16 languages—to support journalists. Our global team of Teaching Fellows will be delivering virtual workshops in 10 languages. 

Creating new revenue opportunities for news organizations

In February, the GNI Subscriptions Lab program expanded to help European publishers strengthen digital subscriptions and grow reader revenue. This month, 8 European publishers were selected to participant in the 9 month program: Independent (UK), RP Online (DE), La Croix (FR), Gazeta Wyborcza (PL), El Mundo (ES), Mittmedia (SE), Denník N (SK) and Kurier (AT). At the end of this year, the program will develop a playbook to share best practices for improving digital subscription performance with the news industry.

We partnered with Vox Media to launch Concert Local, a new advertising marketplace that helps national brands reach the audiences of trusted local news publishers. As we work toward identifying and building sustainable business models for local news organizations, this product creates new revenue opportunities to help fund high-quality journalism in local communities.  

Supporting publishers in Asia Pacific

A new publisher section on the Asia Pacific Think with Google site, shares lessons from five news organizations. You can read  interviews from news industry experts in the region, including The Asahi Shimbun from Japan and The Star from Malaysia. Other organizations, including Singapore Press Holdings, shared insights about digital transformation. 

Together with Echos and Splice, we worked with seven media and news companies across Asia Pacific to tackle business challenges with creative solutions. The learnings from this program informed a Google News Initiative Design Accelerator playbook, so that any media organization can apply design thinking to their business.

Helping newsrooms reach a new generation of news viewers

In partnership with Poynter, Vidspark is helping local publishers use video to reach a younger audience with their journalism. Ahsante Bean, who leads Vidspark, shares tips for media organizations looking to create content that is important, engaging, and relatable.

We are working on other efforts to support journalists around the world, and look forward to sharing more soon. For more updates, follow along at the Google News Initiative blog and @GoogleNewsInit on social.

February brought flowers and chocolate, but we had heart eyes for new journalist tools and events across the globe. Read on for more updates from the last month.  

Supporting the future of news in Europe

190+ participants attended the first GNI EMEA summit, where we announced the expansion of the GNI Subscriptions Lab to Europe, as well as additional training commitments and funding for the Reuters Institute Digital News Report.

During the GNI EMEA Summit, Debunk.eu showed us how they brought journalists, fact-checkers and AI specialists together to curb the spread of disinformation. Partners and Digital News Innovation Fund recipients shared insights about the latest products and innovations in news, the role of machine learning in publishing and new ways to grow reader revenue.

GNI Lab programs help publishers grow their business

The GNI Labs are cohort-based programs that group individual publishers together to tackle a shared challenge. For instance, the GNI Subscriptions Lab is designed to help participants to grow their digital business. Since starting the program, The Buffalo News was able to grow their digital subscribers by 49 percent.

Participants in the GNI Data Lab worked together to understand how data can drive business growth. Six local media companies used data to understand their audience, increase sales, and improve their systems and tools, releasing a full report of their learnings. 

The GNI Ads Lab works with local publishers to identify opportunities for revenue growth. Through the Lab, the Long Beach Post increased their website traffic for breaking news stories, leading to significant advertising revenue growth.

After learning from other Labs, the first GNI Startup Lab is launching in Brazil for entrepreneurs committed to the development of news products that offer quality journalism. The Lab will support early-stage news startups through funding and a 13-week immersion program at the Google for Startups Campus in São Paolo.

Using insights to grow audience engagement

The GNI Audience Lab works with digital publishers to tackle audience growth. The Lab recently created newsletter assessments to help the first cohort of publishers influence loyalty among their readers.  

We recently partnered with Adswerve, a leading Google Marketing Platform and Cloud partner, to create new playbooks on using data to grow audience engagement. While the guides are primarily geared toward publishers and media members, they're applicable to any business that wants to discover new ways to engage with prospects and customers. 

Tackling the spread of misinformation with regional workshops and new tools

Over 500 French citizens and journalists attended full-day workshops at Google Digital Garage spaces in Rennes, Montpellier, Nancy, and Saint-Etienne ahead of the March 15th municipal elections. The content focused on preventing misinformation, including fact-checking workshops and media literacy trainings.

We worked with Storyful, a beneficiary of the GNI Cloud Program, to build the Source app, which helps detect manipulated images and counter misinformation. Powered by Google’s machine learning technology, the app enables journalists to discover the origins and trustworthiness of photos and memes.

That’s a wrap for February. Check back next month, and keep up with the Google News Initiative through our newsletter and social.

February brought flowers and chocolate, but we had heart eyes for new journalist tools and events across the globe. Read on for more updates from the last month.  

Supporting the future of news in Europe

190+ participants attended the first GNI EMEA summit, where we announced the expansion of the GNI Subscriptions Lab to Europe, as well as additional training commitments and funding for the Reuters Institute Digital News Report.

During the GNI EMEA Summit, Debunk.eu showed us how they brought journalists, fact-checkers and AI specialists together to curb the spread of disinformation. Partners and Digital News Innovation Fund recipients shared insights about the latest products and innovations in news, the role of machine learning in publishing and new ways to grow reader revenue.

GNI Lab programs help publishers grow their business

The GNI Labs are cohort-based programs that group individual publishers together to tackle a shared challenge. For instance, the GNI Subscriptions Lab is designed to help participants to grow their digital business. Since starting the program, The Buffalo News was able to grow their digital subscribers by 49 percent.

Participants in the GNI Data Lab worked together to understand how data can drive business growth. Six local media companies used data to understand their audience, increase sales, and improve their systems and tools, releasing a full report of their learnings. 

The GNI Ads Lab works with local publishers to identify opportunities for revenue growth. Through the Lab, the Long Beach Post increased their website traffic for breaking news stories, leading to significant advertising revenue growth.

After learning from other Labs, the first GNI Startup Lab is launching in Brazil for entrepreneurs committed to the development of news products that offer quality journalism. The Lab will support early-stage news startups through funding and a 13-week immersion program at the Google for Startups Campus in São Paolo.

Using insights to grow audience engagement

The GNI Audience Lab works with digital publishers to tackle audience growth. The Lab recently created newsletter assessments to help the first cohort of publishers influence loyalty among their readers.  

We recently partnered with Adswerve, a leading Google Marketing Platform and Cloud partner, to create new playbooks on using data to grow audience engagement. While the guides are primarily geared toward publishers and media members, they're applicable to any business that wants to discover new ways to engage with prospects and customers. 

Tackling the spread of misinformation with regional workshops and new tools

Over 500 French citizens and journalists attended full-day workshops at Google Digital Garage spaces in Rennes, Montpellier, Nancy, and Saint-Etienne ahead of the March 15th municipal elections. The content focused on preventing misinformation, including fact-checking workshops and media literacy trainings.

We worked with Storyful, a beneficiary of the GNI Cloud Program, to build the Source app, which helps detect manipulated images and counter misinformation. Powered by Google’s machine learning technology, the app enables journalists to discover the origins and trustworthiness of photos and memes.

That’s a wrap for February. Check back next month, and keep up with the Google News Initiative through our newsletter and social.

It’s only been one month of the new decade so far, but it feels more like one year. 2020 has been jam-packed. We hope you’re off to a fresh start - keep reading for a few highlights from January.

Supporting Latino journalists across North and South America

In partnership with the GNI, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists is kicking off a training initiative with 12 Spanish-language newsrooms in the continental U.S. and Puerto Rico. This program will include trainings aimed at strengthening journalists' technical and digital verification skills as part of the GNI's larger initiative to train journalists in all 50 states and D.C. ahead of the 2020 U.S. elections.

We’re also working with Chicas Poderosas, a global community that aims to train and empower women in media, to promote female leadership in Latin American media. This partnership will help support a training week for female media leaders from 18 countries; a mediathon bringing together 100 women from the region to collaborate on journalism projects; and an online Spanish-language course on leadership for female Latin American journalists.

Sharing learnings from online video news projects

87 news organizations from around the world have been supported through the GNI YouTube Innovation Funding, which is part of our $25 million commitment to build a strong future for online video journalism. The case studies from the first of these projects demonstrate how these newsrooms have succeeded in developing their video strategy - including Le Monde’s experimentation with new video formats in France, TV Asahi’s development of new technology to commemorate the 2011 earthquake in Japan, and more. 

Elevating and empowering the next generation of news leaders

In Paris, 85 journalism students attended a networking and training event made possible through a partnership with French non-profit La Chance. This partnership aims to support students from disadvantaged backgrounds with financial support and mentoring to help prepare them for highly competitive journalism school entrance exams.  

We partnered with Poynter to help journalists from underrepresented backgrounds attend the 2020 Media Transformation Program, which is an intensive course that helps media organizations tackle challenging problems. The training focus is specific to each participant; the program is focused on driving outcomes such as reaching new audiences, increasing content engagement, developing new revenue streams, creating infrastructure to support innovation, and more.

Supporting the future of local news

33 newsrooms from around Japan attended local news events in Tokyo, Sendai, Kobe, and Fukuoka. Throughout the week, they participated in discussions related to online engagement and creating sustainable business models.

In the U.K., we partnered with the Association for Online Publishing to host an event focused on building investigative and digital skills for journalism.

New technologies to help create and share news 

Steve Henn, our content strategy lead for audio news, shared more about our plans to make audio news searchable and discoverable online.

In partnership with the Solutions Journalism Network, we will be working with 12 newsrooms over the next year to develop new revenue streams based on solutions reporting. Solutions journalism helps to center stories around responses to a specific problem. These projects will explore how this reporting framework can help unlock financial opportunities for newsrooms.

The last month of 2019 was jam-packed for the Google News Initiative. Read on for December highlights—there’s plenty to unwrap as we head into the new year.

Focusing on local news in the heartland

We hosted 32 local journalists at our Detroit, Michigan offices to kick off the relaunch of the Online News Association, the world’s largest association of online journalists, in Detroit. We also brought together 150 U.S. and Canadian news publishers and industry leaders for the first GNI Local event in Chicago, Illinois. Over two days, we focused on turning ideas into action, covering revenue sustainability and user engagement. Publishers shared best practices on audience data, inclusive storytelling, and more.

Supporting news leaders in Brazil

We held the second GNI Summit Brazil in São Paulo with more than 120 journalists and business leaders from Brazil. The agenda focused on business models, collaborative media literacy projects and newsroom innovation. 

Accelerating product ideas in Asia Pacific

Over the last few months, we worked with seven publishers in Asia Pacific through our GNI Design Accelerator Program to test fresh product ideas for news. We began working with India Today to engage Indic language-speaking audiences, thought through youth engagement with Singapore Press Holdings, and brainstormed ways of empowering citizen decision making with Frontier Myanmar ahead of the 2020 Myanmar elections. Over the next few months, we’ll work with each organization to bring these ideas to life.

New technologies to support storytelling

We partnered with Cosmopolitan to launch a fun, interactive wayof watching the Netflix TV show “You”Season Two. Viewers can get behind-the-scenes info, trivia, photos, and Google Trends data as the show unfolds. This new experience creates an entertaining way for Cosmo to keep their audience engaged.  

Technology can help grow audiences in other ways. We recently partnered with Polis at the London School of Economics and Political Science to release a global report highlighting how artificial intelligence can transform journalism. We’re building on that work with new guidelines to help newsrooms approach using artificial intelligence for the first time.

Media literacy is more important than ever—and that’s a fact!

We teamed up with First Draft and the International Fact-Checking Networkto co-host the second annual Trusted Media Summit in Singapore. The weeklong event brought together 275 industry experts involved in fact-checking and fighting misinformation in Asia Pacific. We discussed new fact-checking technologies, ways of connecting trustworthy media to readers, and strategies to improve media literacy.

The Stanford Higher Education Group developed a new Civic Online Reasoning curriculum for our media literacy partner MediaWise, whose goal is to teach teens the difference between fact and fiction online. These digital literacy lessons are available to teachers for free. 

November is when we ask ourselves, “Where did the year go?” This month, all of us working on the Google News Initiative continued to lay the foundation for some cool work in 2020. We can’t wait to see these programs grow.

Local news continues to be a priority. 

In September, we announced a three-year partnership with U.K. publisher Archant to develop sustainable business models for local news. We recently selected Peterborough as the first site for this project, and Peterborough Matters will launch in the spring to provide online-only, community-driven local news. We also partnered with AtlanticLive to host “Informed: The New Era of Local News” in Minneapolis, Minnesota, covering a range of topics important to the future of local. 

We’re working to crack the code on subscription growth. 

Along with our partners Lee Enterprises, we’re working to develop a new machine learning-based paywall technology. We’re applying artificial intelligence to understand how readers engage with content and ultimately make the decision to subscribe. We’ll begin developing this technology in December, and intend to share learnings with the broader media industry. 

Supporting reporters with tools to cover elections is crucial. 

We’re focused on connecting voters to information about candidates and issues, and recently partnered with the Boston Globe to develop a new elections explorer tool. Although videos enrich storytelling, producing video isn’t accessible for many publishers. Along with our partners at Stringr, we’ll support local news with cost-effective video content for the 2020 U.S. elections. Through this partnership, we’ll be supplying local and national news outlets with several kinds of political video news packages on a regular basis.

Developing new technologies to support storytelling. 

With new creation tools now in Google Earth, you can turn our digital globe into your own storytelling canvas, and create a map or story about the places that matter to you. We released new courses on our Training Center to help journalists tell engaging stories around the world.