A nice round-up from the Freelance Unbound blog on a post by a Belgian linguistic researcher, Tom Van Hout, about the differences between print and online journalism.

“I like its academic slant (something which often puts me off), as it actually helps to illuminate the murky way that news journalism is constructed and then passed off as something whole and authoritative.”

This quote by Van Hout is picked out: “Online, ‘readers’ can see how the sausage is being made and promptly start making sausages themselves. This inevitably leads to discussions about sausage making.”

The summary and the original post are worth a visit.

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The latest is from MediaGuardian: ‘Google to host ads from European agencies (March 17)’: “Google is ramping up its efforts to make money from its controversial Google News service by striking deals with eight European news agencies, and launching a contextual ad service to display adverts around their stories.”

Here’s a round-up of the recent coverage of advertising on Google News and other parts of Google, and its impact for journalism. Please do add any good links you’ve spotted in the comments below, or Tweet us via @journalismnews and we’ll include them in the list.

• Official Google Blog: ‘Ads in Google News searches’ (February 25): “Last November, we announced plans to begin experimenting with ads on a number of Google properties, including news query refinements within Google search. Today, we’re continuing a similar experience for users by introducing ads on Google News search-results pages in the US.”

• Journalism.co.uk: ‘Copiepresse would sue again if Google introduced advertising to Belgian news channel’ (March 4): “The secretary-general of Belgian newspaper copyright group, Copiepresse, said that if advertising on Google News was introduced in Belgium, as is happening in the US, the group would fight another case.”

• Official Google Blog: ‘Making ads more interesting’ (March 11): “We think we can make online advertising even more relevant and useful by using additional information about the websites people visit. Today we are launching ‘interest-based’ advertising as a beta test on our partner sites and on YouTube.”

• EditorsWeblog: Google News and newspaper publishers: enemies or allies? (March 11): “The internet has changed the way that people read newspapers in many ways: not least because news aggregators such as Google News have helped to bring readers away from the habit of focussing their news reading on just one paper’s website.”

• WashingtonPost: ‘Google to deliver more interesting ads’: (March 16): The piece asks: “So you tell me: How obnoxious would an ad have to be for you to stop visiting the site hosting it? What if it was a site that you wanted to see stay in business?”

• The Register: ‘Google clones search ad machine on photo sharer’ (March 16): “Google is now showing text ads when users search for public pics on its Picasa photo-sharing site.”

• EditorsWeblog: ‘Google News to host more news agency content with ads alongside’ (March 17) “Google News announced that it has struck a deal with eight European news agencies to host their content and to display advertisements around their stories.”
  

  
  

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A group of Belgian newspapers are seeking up to £39m (€49m) in damages from Google for the search giant publishing and storing their content without permission or offering payment.

Last year Google lost a case brought against it by the Copiepresse group – an organisation that represents the French language press in Belgium – forcing it to remove cached versions of newspaper articles and take down content from its Google News service

The organisation’s secretary-general told Bloomberg yesterday it had summoned Google to appear again before a Brussels court so that it could decide on the damages. Copiepresse is seeking between €32.8 and 49.1m.

The damages would be in addition to the €25,000 (£20,000) daily fine imposed on Google by the court for each day it kept Copiepresse material on its site.

Google appealed the original court decision of February 2007, which ruled that it could not claim ‘fair use’ – acceptable under copyright law – for using a lines of text and linking to the original article.

A Google spokesperson told Bloomberg that it was still awaiting the results of its appeal and that it had not received notification from Copiepresse of any new court dates.

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A victory in a European court last year against Google has encouraged newspapers in Belgium to take action against the European Commission over links on two agency sites.

According to the Times, a Brussels court has been asked by a group of French- and German-language newspapers to examine its claim.

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