The downfall of the local news was bad and is now getting much worse. This led to a crisis of nearly 40% between the years 1994-2014 in Newsroom employment. Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government gave a security loan amount $50million to support local news coverage to help non-profit small news organizations.
The national news platform is blooming, leaving behind the local news media to decline. The downfall can become troublesome in the coming years. Not less than 1500 newspapers were closed and 10,000 journalists were unemployed.
Google has been fostering journalism for a long time now. And there it comes, launching a News initiative platform with WordPress.
Are all local journalists happy now?
It has invested almost $1.2 million for creating the platform named Newspack. This project focuses on local newsrooms. Newspack will be an opensource and revenue generating a platform for many organizations.
This initiative is backed with much funding of around $1 million by different ventures namely Lenfest Institute of journalism, the John S and James L. Knight Foundation and Civil media. The platform is the most cost-effective solution with best-in-class tools.
Also, Automattic partners with Spirit Media, which will provide revenue solutions for the publishers. This initiative is helping journalism in the digital realm signifying a major milestone.
The platform aims that the journalists should just focus on developing meaningful editorial work while rest would be taken care of. It will be supported by all WordPress plugins and WordPress support packages and would be charged fees between one thousand to two thousand dollars per month.
Google’s important part of this initiative is to advise on Newspack’s feature set and give technical support for integrating Google products.
The launch will happen probably in July’19 but enthusiasts can apply for the early bird registration on the official window.
Many influencer companies are giving efforts in making this platform a success. The success and popularity can only be known once the platform is made publically available. All we can expect as of now is that it should be a panacea for all troubles of journalists and Wordpress development company. The platform is receiving enough attention to succeed.
