Google To Fund Dozens Of New Local News Websites

Axios reports:

Google is launching the Local Experiments Project, an effort to fund dozens of new local news websites around the country and eventually around the world. The tech giant says it will have no editorial control over the sites, which will be built by partners it selects with local news expertise.

Big tech companies like Google and Facebook are often blamed for the demise of the local news business model. Now, both are trying to fix the broken local news ecosystem for the sake of their audiences, which they say crave more local news.

Google has rolled out several local news efforts in the past few weeks, around the first anniversary of its Google News Initiative — a pledge to invest $300 million in news media transition to digital over three years. The Local Experiments Project will use funds from the broader Google News Initiative to fund the new sites.