Based on reports I've read, if Google reduced their "cut" of the ad revenue, then news organizations might actually be able to survive. As it stands, when you remove large % of revenues, guess what happens? Closures and fewer reporters. It's all about money. These attempts are sheer dog S. The only thing that will maintain neutral and reliable news reporting is when Google doesn't run the entire online ecosystem. There are reports on this as it related to news and the impacts so it's not some unsubstantiated rubbish. If you said to any newspaper that they will lose say, 20%, 30% or 40% of their ad revenue, what will happen is what has been happening. I could reply to every one of those rubbish objectives and say take less money. Repeat, take less money. Take less money. As news has gone online, essentially every news organization now pays a Google tax. Well, as news goes to S, there is a big elephant in the room. Imagine trying to fix a problem that you have majorly and continue to majorly create. This initiative is a crock of S if anyone dares to read a few reports which are based on facts surrounding the online "news" sector.

Bwaaahahaha! I got you now, my pretty! Only I'm going to say that I want to help you. Is that okay with you?

Sustained journalism? The journalists are part of the problem!

And now there's a subscriber system via Google.
Google Makes it Easier to Subscribe to Premium News Publisher Content [webmasterworld.com]

There's an interesting commentary on this whole topic for both Facebook and Google from Peter Kafka who sums it up nicely.

Here’s the problem: No matter how hard Google and Facebook try to help publishers, they will do more to hurt them, because that’s the way they’re supposed to work. They’re built to eviscerate publishers.

[recode.net...]

Let's hope that Google knows the difference between "journalist" and "commentator"

If you tax the F out of any industry it will eventually dry up. News went from print to digital. When it went to digital, the papers had to start paying the tax. That advertising tax. That alone is clearly not sustainable and the drying up of newsrooms is directly correlated to the company (or companies) that own advertising in the online world. Trying to fix a problem that your own greed is creating, and then pretending it's other factors, and then try to help correct the problem with fluff, is nothing short of a joke. A few dummies might not see it and some of those dummies hold high positions. Newspaper industry needs to adapt? They sure have been. It's the closures and layoffs in the news industry. Less journalists. Small budgets. Less investigations. If you can't pay the people to do the work, the work doesn't get done. If you hire cheap labor, the ability to do the job right or well goes out the window. It's farcical to ignore the elephant in the room (yourself) and then look like the good guy trying to fix the problem you (and others) created which is looking past the overweight elephant in the room that grows bigger by the day. I wish I was less observant.