Village Media, which operates this site, is one of four Canadian news outlets accepted into the Google News Initiative's North American 'Innovation Challenge'.
Google announced this morning that a total of 34 companies across the continent will take part in the challenge, which offers up $5.8 million in funding aimed at developing "sustainable business models with diversified streams of revenue coming from readers in the era of digital journalism."
In Canada, that list includes Canadian Press, TorStar Corp. and Earbank News Exchange. Across North America, 269 organizations applied to take part.
Village's project will be focused on connecting users — both readers and advertisers — on "a one-to-one and a one-to-many basis with other members of their geographical community of interest."
The end result will be "a platform for social interaction between community members within our local news environment."
"The presence of local businesses within that environment ensures that any growth in user activity will directly impact the local economic base. Each type of interaction positively impacts revenue and engagement (traffic), and also makes the site more useful, relevant and interesting to the User," reads the project description.
From Google's announcement:
"We were looking for applicants focused on generating revenue and/or increasing audience engagement for local news. The successful projects clearly answered this call."
The search giant has published an overview of each of the projects, which include efforts by The Dallas Morning News, The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism and Charlotte, N.C.'s main news outlet for the Latino community, La Notica.
In Canada, CP plans to use the Google funding to develop a project that will work with publicly available data to help struggling newsrooms, and Ontario-based Earbank is developing a system that will help broadcast companies and journalists archive audio clips and sound bites so that they can be better monetized. TorStar says it wants to develop a digital-only local news product that will "re-invigorate community discourse and showcase the full range of diverse voices and interests in each community."
This isn't the first time Sault Ste. Marie-based Village Media has teamed up with Google. Earlier this month, Google's Compass Experiment launched MahoningMatters, a digital-only news site in Youngstown, Ohio run by McClatchy using Village Media's local news platform.
This is Google's second Innovation Challenge out of up to five planned worldwide. Google has said it will spend $30 million over two years to fund the projects. Fifty-seven organizations and companies from the Asia-Pacific region were selected to receive funding in March. Further challenges are expected to cover the Middle East and Africa, Europe and Latin America.
Google says the projects are meant to "enlighten citizens with trustworthy content and focus on encouraging a more sustainable news ecosystem."
