E-portfolio: Google's Relationship With Journalists. Max Rausch

A couple days ago, Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave a speech at a conference to the American Society of News Editors. Megan Garber from Nieman Journalism Lab posted the highlights on the NJL blog, and the speech seemed to encapsulate much of the complicated relationship journalists as individuals and as a collective of professionals have with the mega-corporation.

According to Garber, the crowd's reaction "was cordial...but -despite the many, many compliments paid to journalism and journalists over the course of the talk- not overly friendly."

Schmidt said that Google as a company shares the journalist's attitude towards information, that "ultimately the world is a better place with more information available to more and more people." The statement is worded to imply a need for cooperation, which in all fairness does exist. After all, with more people than ever accessing news stories online (most of them by extension through Google), journalists and Google are bound by mutual interest to stay on cordial terms. Even if Google refuses to pay news publications for their content.

He also pointed out the resources journalists have had at their disposal for only a relatively short period of time (not the least of which being Google itself). "...you have more ways to report. and new ways of making money will develop." He has something of a point, although it's hard not to be cynical about his optimism, since Google's as rich as ever even as journalists struggle to get by. Still, he was correct in his assessment that the business model was the problem, not necessarily the conduct of journalists per se.

From what I can gather, even without attending the conference, there was a definite amount of truth in much of Schmidt's words, obvious tension with the crowd of journalists notwithstanding. Schmidt had a strategy to smooth over that though: unabashed brown-nosing. He described the profession as a delicate art form, exalted in optimism of lucrative business models to come (without, it should be noted, describing any such hypothetical model, and not specifying whether the said model would more profitable for journalists or Google),and even tried, however feebly, to come down off his rhetorical mountain.

"You get criticized all the time. On the left, you get criticized for being too liberal. On the right, you get criticized fro being too conservative," he said. "In our case, we just get kicked out of China. Same thought."

As a journalist, it's difficult to sympathize with a billionaire seemingly struggling for a monopoly over information distribution. But even so, there was legitimacy woven into certain parts of his speech, and he nevertheless offered a somewhat extended glimpse into what the future of information would look like. Even if you practically saw it coming already.

Image taken from here.