Google in pact with UK publisher Archant to boost local news

In a bid to build a sustainable digital model for local news, Google has entered into a three-year partnership with UK publisher Archant for Project Neon which will target up to three communities, identified as being currently underserved by local news.

The project will build new all-digital news platforms for those communities, created in a concerted effort to reverse the commercial challenges local news publishers have faced in the past decade.

"Project Neon will rethink local news from every perspective, from storytelling to layout, from business models to website design," Matt Kelly, Chief Content Officer, Archant, said in a blog post on Thursday.

As part of the partnership, Archant's project team will work closely with a team of experts at Google, who are providing funding for the project as part of the "Local Experiments Project" of the Google News Initiative.

Archant is the second partner worldwide in this project, following McClatchy in the US.

"Nobody can accurately predict how the future of local journalism will look. But with our shared vision for building strong communities, Archant and the Google News Initiative will break new ground towards the goal of a local news industry that not only survives, but thrives," Kelly said.IANS