We stumbled across an interesting article from The Atlantic:

“Plummeting newspaper circulation, disappearing classified ads, “unbundling” of content—the list of what’s killing journalism is long. But high on that list, many would say, is Google, the biggest unbundler of them all. Now, having helped break the news business, the company wants to fix it—for commercial as well as civic reasons: if news organizations stop producing great journalism, says one Google executive, the search engine will no longer have interesting content to link to. So some of the smartest minds at the company are thinking about this, and working with publishers, and peering ahead to see what the future of journalism looks like. Guess what? It’s bright.”

The only problem is, is that “Plummeting newspaper circulation, disappearing classified ads, “unbundling” of content”, have nothing to do with journalism whatsoever, they’re specific to the newspaper industry only. I don’t know about you, but 75-90% of the people I know find their news online from a large variety of sources: news agencies, social Media, news-oriented websites, radio, blogs, etc. The Newspaper industry while bleeding, is still a profit-heavy business. With this being said, the article DOES have a lot of interesting information on Google’s effect on the Newspaper industry

I couldn’t help but conjure up images of Tron with this posting, but I am all about Inc Magazine’s editorial division to pack up their bags and work from home or “go virtual” as they say….

Here’s the quick breakdown from Inc:
Not only are they saving money in overhead by doing it, but they’re making a viral-marketing blitz even by just simply announcing it. NPR, and the NY Times have both picked up the story, and while I particularly enjoy their stories about people in the Caymans living off of their website-domain portfolios, it’s nice to see an “experiment” like this in the making.

Newspaper Publishers out there reading this – take note! This same strategy might work for you some day. Here’s their quick reasoning behind the move: “Everyone knows the workforce is becoming more virtual. Free online technologies offered by the likes of Skype and Google have made it possible for start-ups to be launched by teams of people who live in different cities or, for that matter, on different continents. As for established businesses, a compelling argument can be made that, between high rents and long commutes, virtual work is more desirable, too. And individual workers have found that telecommuting opens up possibilities for integrating work and life (in ways both good and bad) as never before.”
Read more about Inc Magazine’s Virtual Move here…

A Google spokesman issued the following statement to the Wall Street Journal in regards to the AP’s news articles making a resurrgence (after a month long absense) on Google News:

“We have a licensing agreement with the Associated Press that permits us to host its content on Google properties such as Google News. The licensing agreement is the subject of ongoing discussion so we won’t be commenting further at this time.”

We enjoyed the distinctive-wording in the statement: “Google properties such as Google News” – just in case you weren’t aware, Mr. (or Miss) Journalist, Google News is owned by (drumroll…) GOOGLE!

This makes the arrangement very interesting, somewhat great (more news to read online is a good thing right?!), and totally meaningless all at the same time, mostly since the AP can be found & consumed all over Yahoo.com, the AP website, probably 1/2 of the blogs on the web, and in printed form in over, what, 3/4 of the newspapers in the United States?

Read some of the latest Google spliced news here and get a glimpse of the future of online newsfeeds as we know it.

E & P reports that “Fully 44%(?!?!) of those polled said they scan headlines on Google “without accessing the newspaper sites,” the report said. For many users, the report continues, “headlines are enough and valuable, and that’s been the crux of news wire and news companies’ increasing complaints about Google’s ‘unfair’ use of the news supply line.” Read the study at Editor & Publisher