In an effort to put original reporting in front of users, Google’s VP of news Richard Gingras announced Thursday that the company has changed its global search algorithm to “highlight articles that we identify as significant original reporting,” and to keep such articles in top positions for longer.

The Associated Press is launching a pilot project aimed at increasing local news coverage and improving the way member news organizations collaborate with one another.

With support from the Google News Initiative, AP will build an online tool that enables members to share their coverage plans to more efficiently cover local news.

It will also allow participating news organizations to share their journalism, increasing the amount of local news stories in their communities.

The News Media Alliance has published findings from a new study that analyzes how Google uses and benefits from news. Among the major findings of the study is that news is a key source on which Google has increasingly relied to drive consumer engagement with its products. The amount of news in Google search results ranges from 16 to 40 percent, and the platform received an estimated $4.7 billion in revenue in 2018 from crawling and scraping news publishers' content – without paying the publishers for that use.

Ten newspapers have been selected to work with the Google News Initiative, Local Media Association and FTI Consulting as part of the recently announced Digital Subscriptions Lab. They are: El Nuevo Día (GFR Media), The Baltimore Sun (Tribune), The Buffalo News (Berkshire Hathaway), The Columbus Dispatch (GateHouse Media), The Houston Chronicle (Hearst), The Idaho Press (Adams Publishing Group), The Portland Press Herald (Portland, Maine), The Post and Courier (Charleston, S.C.), The Southeast Missourian (Rust Communications) and The Toronto Star (Torstar).

If you missed the webinar that outlined how employees of SNPA member newspapers can take part in free Google certification programs, here's an overview of the different Google paths/tracks that are available. This is just one more benefit of your SNPA membership!

On Monday, Feb. 26, the News Media Alliance again called on Congress to allow publishers to negotiate collectively with dominant online platforms, namely Facebook and Google.

In an Op-Ed published in The Wall Street Journal, Alliance President & CEO David Chavern announced that Congressman David Cicilline (D-RI), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee, is expected to introduce a bill soon that would amend anti-trust laws to incorporate a safe harbor, allowing news publishers to negotiate with the big tech platforms, and therefore flowing needed ad dollars back to the deserving parties, the news publishers.

Read more from News Media Alliance

Lineup Systems has introduced Adpoint Workflow to simplify complex advertising workflows for media companies selling multimedia advertising. Adpoint Workflow systemizes and maps order-to-billing business processes, reducing order processing times and increasing operational efficiencies.

Today's media companies handle complex, multimedia orders that require numerous authorizations and involve multiple team members. Manual tasks and authorization processes often delay or prevent orders from being processed. To solve this issue, Lineup Systems designed Adpoint Workflow to automate redundant, manual tasks based on pre-defined standard operating procedures, enabling media companies to quickly and accurately process orders.

The News Media Alliance has called on Congress to allow publishers to negotiate collectively with dominant online platforms. The objective is to permit publishers to have concrete discussions with the two dominant distributors of online news content, Google and Facebook, on business model solutions to secure the long-term availability of local journalism produced by America's newsrooms.

SNPA has established a strategic partnership with AdCellerant that will provide FREE training and Google certifications to employees of SNPA member newspapers. AdCellerant is an ad tech/digital marketing managed solutions startup based in Denver, Colo.

SNPA's partnership with AdCellerant will allow association members to have free access to several Google trainings, including Academy for Ads. These are training modules across a variety of different Google platforms, including AdWords, Google Analytics, Mobile, Video, eCommerce, etc.

In this week's Futures Lab update, we chat with David Gehring, who works with global alliances and partnership strategies at Google.