Category Archives: Google News Blog

The official blog from the team at Google News

Want to score this playoff season? Shoot over to Search and Newsstand

Playoff season is in full swing. Whether your eyes are glued to the ice for the NHL Stanley Cup or geared up for a fastbreak during the NBA Finals, you can stay in the know with your favorite teams right in Play Newsstand and with posts in Google Search.

Check out Play Newsstand this playoff season, where you can get a play-by-play of all the action. Starting today, Newsstand will feature special NBA and Stanley Cup Playoffs sections, which will bring you the latest updates from thousands of local and national news sources in one place. You’ll also catch real-time updates directly from the leagues and the teams. These new Playoff sections make it easy to catch the top headlines, then dive into the latest scores, analyses and videos about your favorite teams, including their own posts to Google. Make Play Newsstand your #1 pick at the Play and App Stores, or pick it up on waiver at newsstand.google.com.

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But that’s not all. Now you can get the latest updates, videos, photos and more right on the Knowledge Panels in Search directly from some of your favorite NHL and NBA teams. In those posts, you’ll see the highlights that your home team (or rivals!) share. Check back throughout the day and week to make sure you don’t miss a thing. (No need for you baseball fans to balk, we’ve completed the triple play with posts from the MLB and all its teams too.)

Giddy for a GIF of that buzzer-beater? Look no further than Google Search. Whether you’re a citizen of #DubNation in the Bay or charging for the Bulls, you’ll have access to posts all across the court in the span of a 20-second timeout.

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Want to see that puck hit the net? From assist to Zamboni, skating through updates from more than 30 teams across the NHL has never been smoother. A quick search on Google brings up an all-star lineup of content from the teams you care about across the U.S. and Canada—get the news before your buddies for a real power play. No need to drop your gloves, you can even do a voice search on your phone.

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Don’t score an own-goal: Take the ball or the puck and search for your team. The race to the Finals is on!!

Fact Check now available in Google Search and News around the world

Google was built to help people find useful information by surfacing the great content that publishers and sites create. This access to high quality information is what drives people to use the web and for contributors to continue to engage and invest in it.

However, with thousands of new articles published online every minute of every day, the amount of content confronting people online can be overwhelming.  And unfortunately, not all of it is factual or true, making it hard for people to distinguish fact from fiction. That’s why last October, along with our partners at Jigsaw, we announced that in a few countries we would start enabling publishers to show a “Fact Check” tag in Google News for news stories. This label identifies articles that include information fact checked by news publishers and fact-checking organizations.

After assessing feedback from both users and publishers, we’re making the Fact Check label in Google News available everywhere, and expanding it into Search globally in all languages. For the first time, when you conduct a search on Google that returns an authoritative result containing fact checks for one or more public claims, you will see that information clearly on the search results page. The snippet will display information on the claim, who made the claim, and the fact check of that particular claim.

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This information won’t be available for every search result, and there may be search result pages where different publishers checked the same claim and reached different conclusions. These fact checks are not Google’s and are presented so people can make more informed judgements. Even though differing conclusions may be presented, we think it’s still helpful for people to understand the degree of consensus around a particular claim and have clear information on which sources agree. As we make fact checks more visible in Search results, we believe people will have an easier time reviewing and assessing these fact checks, and making their own informed opinions.

For publishers to be included in this feature, they must be using the Schema.org ClaimReview markup on the specific pages where they fact check public statements (documentation here), or they can use the Share the Facts widget developed by the Duke University Reporters Lab and Jigsaw. Only publishers that are algorithmically determined to be an authoritative source of information will qualify for inclusion. Finally, the content must adhere to the general policies that apply to all structured data markup, the Google News Publisher criteria for fact checks, and the standards for accountability and transparency, readability or proper site representation as articulated in our Google News General Guidelines. If a publisher or fact check claim does not meet these standards or honor these policies, we may, at our discretion, ignore that site's markup.

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This effort wouldn’t be possible without the help of other organizations and the fact check community, which has grown to 115 organizations. To find out more about this new feature, visit the Help Center.

Data Journalism Awards 2017: Call for submissions

With trust in journalism under attack, data journalism has never been more vital. And this year, for the sixth consecutive year, we’re proud to support the 2017 Data Journalism Awards.

But you need to get your skates on: The deadline is fast approaching for the only global awards recognizing work that brings together data, visualization and storytelling to produce some of the most innovative journalism out in the world today.

It’s a part of our commitment to supporting innovative journalism both in Europe and around the world.
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Past winners of the $1,801 prizes include the New York Times, Buzzfeed, FiveThirtyEight, Quartz and IndiaSpend. 2017 hopefuls don’t have long: the deadline for this year’s awards is April 7, 2017 at midnight GMT.

And if you’re wondering why the prize is $1,801? That’s because in 1801 William Playfair invented the pie chart.

Aimed at newsrooms and journalists in organizations of all sizes—big and small—the #DJA2016 awards will recognize the best work in key categories, including:

  • Data visualisation of the year

  • Investigation of the year

  • News data app of the year

  • Data journalism website of the year

  • The Chartbeat award for the best use of data in a breaking news story, within first 36 hours

  • Open data award

  • Small newsrooms (one or more winners)

  • Student and young data journalist of the year

  • Best individual portfolio

The competition is organized by the Global Editors Network: a cross-platform community of editors-in-chief and media innovators committed to high-quality journalism, with the support of Google and the Knight Foundation. For Google, the Data Journalism Awards offer another way for foster innovation through partnership with the news industry, in addition to our efforts through the Digital News Initiative and the work of the Google News Lab teams around the world.

Data journalists, editors and publishers are encouraged to submit their work for consideration by joining the GEN community via this form by April 7 at midnight GMT. A jury of peers from the publishing community, including new jury members Esra Doğramacı from Deutsche Welle and Data Journalism China’s Yolanda Ma will choose the winners, which will be announced during a gala dinner at the Global Editors Network Summit in Vienna on June 22.

Good luck!

Simon Rogers is Data Editor at Google’s News Lab and Director of the Data Journalism Awards

More news in Google News & Weather

The world of news is broad, deep and ever-changing. The News & Weather app shows the top three stories from various sections on its Home page, but beneath this surface lie many more informative and engaging stories. In fact, we find that many people regularly hit the bottom of our Home page looking for more to read. To offer you further opportunities to discover great content, we’ve added over 200 news stories to the Home screen in a browsable stream called More Headlines

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Get a deeper view into the latest from Business, Tech, Entertainment, Sports and various other sections, ranked and classified for easy reading. The More Headlines section loads stories on demand as you keep scrolling, quenching your thirst for news.

You’ll also enjoy fast-loading AMP articles, as an increasing number of publishers adopt the AMP format. As usual, each story retains the goodness of a comprehensive perspective—expand a card to gain insight from different articles such as Highly Cited, Local Source and Fact Check. Everything stays algorithmic—from clustering articles to classifying stories to ranking the stream.

More Headlines will be rolled out over the coming days to News & Weather users on iOS and Android. To see it in action, read through the Home sections and simply keep going.

Digital News Initiative Innovation Fund: Call for third round applications

In 2016, the Digital News Initiative Innovation Fund, our €150 million commitment to supporting innovation in the European news industry, offered EUR 51m to 252 ambitious projects in digital journalism across 27 countries. Today, we’re thrilled to open the Fund for a third round of applications

From the outset, we designed the Fund to provide no-strings-attached awards to those in the news industry looking for some room (and budget) to experiment. Why are we doing this? Because at Google we know from experience that the biggest, boldest ideas often start small. Through the DNI Fund we want to give new approaches the freedom to experiment--and maybe even to soar.

We’ve been impressed by both the number and the quality of the applications we’ve received in the first two rounds of funding, and are proud to have funded hundreds including many committed to the important challenges around fact-checking and verification of content. More on past projects can be found on our NEW website, launched today at digitalnewsinitiative.com. To give time for aspiring applicants to prepare, this season’s application round will be open for the next six weeks, ending 20th April.

We’re looking for projects that demonstrate new thinking in the practice of digital journalism; that support the development of new business models, or maybe even change the way users consume digital news. Last round we issued a call for collaboration--across industry and across the region--and of course we’d love to see this trend continue. As a focus for this round, we’d also encourage applicants to explore new areas of monetisation to potentially unlock new revenue streams for the industry.

The Digital News Initiative, which began as a partnership between Google and a small handful of  European news organisations, has grown into an ecosystem of more than 180 now working together to support high quality journalism through technology and innovation, including the open-sourced Accelerated Mobile Pages Project, and the dedicated YouTube Player for Publishers, being used on news sites across Europe. The DNI  initiative is open to anyone involved in Europe’s digital news industry, large or small, established or newcomer.

DNI Family

Here’s a quick reminder of how the Fund works:

Projects

We’re looking for projects that demonstrate new thinking in the practice of digital journalism; that support the development of new business models, or maybe even change the way users consume digital news. Projects can be highly experimental, but must have well-defined goals and have a significant digital component. There is absolutely no requirement to use any Google products. Successful projects will show innovation and have a positive impact on the production of original digital journalism and on the long-term sustainability of the news business.

Eligibility

The Fund is open to established publishers, online-only players, news start-ups, collaborative partnerships and individuals based in the EU and EFTA countries.

Funding

There are three categories of funding available:

  • Prototype projects: open to organisations - and to individuals - that meet the eligibility criteria, and require up to €50k of funding. These projects should be very early stage, with ideas yet to be designed and assumptions yet to be tested. We will fast-track such projects and will fund 100% of the total cost.

  • Medium projects: open to organisations that meet the eligibility criteria and require up to €300k of funding. We will accept funding requests up to 70% of the total cost of the project.

  • Large projects: open to organisations that meet the eligibility criteria and require more than €300k of funding. We will accept funding requests up to 70% of the total cost of the project. Funding is capped at €1 million.

Exceptions to the €1 million cap are possible for large projects that are collaborative (e.g., international, sector-wide, involving multiple organisations) or that significantly benefit the broad news ecosystem.

How to apply

Visit the new Digital News Initiative website for full details, including eligibility criteria, terms and conditions, and application forms. Applications must be made in English and the submission deadline for the first round of funding is 20th April, 2017.

Governance

We’ve consulted widely to ensure that the Fund has inclusive and transparent application and selection processes. Confidentiality is critical; applicants should not share business-sensitive or highly confidential information. Full details can be found on the DNI website.

Initial selection of projects will be done by a Project team, composed of a mix of experienced industry figures and Google staff, who will review all applications for eligibility, innovation and impact. They’ll make recommendations on funding for Prototype and Medium projects to the Fund’s Council, which will have oversight of the Fund’s selection process. The Council will vote on Large projects.

Council members:

  • Joao Palmeiro, President of the Portuguese publishers association and Chair of the DNI Innovation Fund Council

  • Alexander Asseily, Founder & CEO of State, Founder of Jawbone

  • Miriam Meckel, Editor-in-Chief of WirtschaftsWoche

  • Arianna Ciccone, Co-Founder and Director of the Perugia International Journalism Festival

  • Bartosz Hojka, CEO of Agora S.A.

  • Veit Dengler, CEO, Neue Zürcher Zeitung

  • Rosalia Lloret, Head of Institutional Relations, Online Publishers’ Association Europe

  • Bruno Patino, Dean of Sciences-Po Journalism School

  • Murdoch MacLennan, CEO of the Telegraph Media Group

  • Bart Brouwers, Professor in Journalism at Groningen University

  • Madhav Chinnappa, Director of Strategic Relations, News and Publishers, Google

  • Torsten Schuppe, Director of Marketing EMEA, Google

  • Ronan Harris, Vice President, Google

We will announce the next recipients of these awards before the start of the summer holidays. We look forward to receiving your https://digitalnewsinitiative.com/dni-fund/apply-for-fundingapplications!

Digital News Initiative Innovation Fund: Call for third round applications

In 2016, the Digital News Initiative Innovation Fund, our €150 million commitment to supporting innovation in the European news industry, offered EUR 51m to 252 ambitious projects in digital journalism across 27 countries. Today, we’re thrilled to open the Fund for a third round of applications

From the outset, we designed the Fund to provide no-strings-attached awards to those in the news industry looking for some room (and budget) to experiment. Why are we doing this? Because at Google we know from experience that the biggest, boldest ideas often start small. Through the DNI Fund we want to give new approaches the freedom to experiment--and maybe even to soar.

We’ve been impressed by both the number and the quality of the applications we’ve received in the first two rounds of funding, and are proud to have funded hundreds including many committed to the important challenges around fact-checking and verification of content. More on past projects can be found on our NEW website, launched today at digitalnewsinitiative.com. To give time for aspiring applicants to prepare, this season’s application round will be open for the next six weeks, ending 20th April.

We’re looking for projects that demonstrate new thinking in the practice of digital journalism; that support the development of new business models, or maybe even change the way users consume digital news. Last round we issued a call for collaboration--across industry and across the region--and of course we’d love to see this trend continue. As a focus for this round, we’d also encourage applicants to explore new areas of monetisation to potentially unlock new revenue streams for the industry.

The Digital News Initiative, which began as a partnership between Google and a small handful of  European news organisations, has grown into an ecosystem of more than 180 now working together to support high quality journalism through technology and innovation, including the open-sourced Accelerated Mobile Pages Project, and the dedicated YouTube Player for Publishers, being used on news sites across Europe. The DNI  initiative is open to anyone involved in Europe’s digital news industry, large or small, established or newcomer.

DNI Family

Here’s a quick reminder of how the Fund works:

Projects

We’re looking for projects that demonstrate new thinking in the practice of digital journalism; that support the development of new business models, or maybe even change the way users consume digital news. Projects can be highly experimental, but must have well-defined goals and have a significant digital component. There is absolutely no requirement to use any Google products. Successful projects will show innovation and have a positive impact on the production of original digital journalism and on the long-term sustainability of the news business.

Eligibility

The Fund is open to established publishers, online-only players, news start-ups, collaborative partnerships and individuals based in the EU and EFTA countries.

Funding

There are three categories of funding available:

  • Prototype projects: open to organisations - and to individuals - that meet the eligibility criteria, and require up to €50k of funding. These projects should be very early stage, with ideas yet to be designed and assumptions yet to be tested. We will fast-track such projects and will fund 100% of the total cost.

  • Medium projects: open to organisations that meet the eligibility criteria and require up to €300k of funding. We will accept funding requests up to 70% of the total cost of the project.

  • Large projects: open to organisations that meet the eligibility criteria and require more than €300k of funding. We will accept funding requests up to 70% of the total cost of the project. Funding is capped at €1 million.

Exceptions to the €1 million cap are possible for large projects that are collaborative (e.g., international, sector-wide, involving multiple organisations) or that significantly benefit the broad news ecosystem.

How to apply

Visit the new Digital News Initiative website for full details, including eligibility criteria, terms and conditions, and application forms. Applications must be made in English and the submission deadline for the first round of funding is 20th April, 2017.

Governance

We’ve consulted widely to ensure that the Fund has inclusive and transparent application and selection processes. Confidentiality is critical; applicants should not share business-sensitive or highly confidential information. Full details can be found on the DNI website.

Initial selection of projects will be done by a Project team, composed of a mix of experienced industry figures and Google staff, who will review all applications for eligibility, innovation and impact. They’ll make recommendations on funding for Prototype and Medium projects to the Fund’s Council, which will have oversight of the Fund’s selection process. The Council will vote on Large projects.

Council members:

  • Joao Palmeiro, President of the Portuguese publishers association and Chair of the DNI Innovation Fund Council

  • Alexander Asseily, Founder & CEO of State, Founder of Jawbone

  • Miriam Meckel, Editor-in-Chief of WirtschaftsWoche

  • Arianna Ciccone, Co-Founder and Director of the Perugia International Journalism Festival

  • Bartosz Hojka, CEO of Agora S.A.

  • Veit Dengler, CEO, Neue Zürcher Zeitung

  • Rosalia Lloret, Head of Institutional Relations, Online Publishers’ Association Europe

  • Bruno Patino, Dean of Sciences-Po Journalism School

  • Murdoch MacLennan, CEO of the Telegraph Media Group

  • Bart Brouwers, Professor in Journalism at Groningen University

  • Madhav Chinnappa, Director of Strategic Relations, News and Publishers, Google

  • Torsten Schuppe, Director of Marketing EMEA, Google

  • Ronan Harris, Vice President, Google

We will announce the next funding recipients before the start of the summer holidays. We look forward to receiving your https://digitalnewsinitiative.com/dni-fund/apply-for-fundingapplications!

When computers learn to swear: Using machine learning for better online conversations

Imagine trying to have a conversation with your friends about the news you read this morning, but every time you said something, someone shouted in your face, called you a nasty name or accused you of some awful crime. You’d probably leave the conversation. Unfortunately, this happens all too frequently online as people try to discuss ideas on their favorite news sites but instead get bombarded with toxic comments.  

Seventy-two percent of American internet users have witnessed harassment online and nearly half have personally experienced it. Almost a third self-censor what they post online for fear of retribution. According to the same report, online harassment has affected the lives of roughly 140 million people in the U.S., and many more elsewhere.

This problem doesn’t just impact online readers. News organizations want to encourage engagement and discussion around their content, but find that sorting through millions of comments to find those that are trolling or abusive takes a lot of money, labor, and time. As a result, many sites have shut down comments altogether. But they tell us that isn’t the solution they want. We think technology can help.

Today, Google and Jigsaw are launching Perspective, an early-stage technology that uses machine learning to help identify toxic comments. Through an API, publishers—including members of the Digital News Initiative—and platforms can access this technology and use it for their sites.

How it works

Perspective reviews comments and scores them based on how similar they are to comments people said were “toxic” or likely to make someone leave a conversation. To learn how to spot potentially toxic language, Perspective examined hundreds of thousands of comments that had been labeled by human reviewers. Each time Perspective finds new examples of potentially toxic comments, or is provided with corrections from users, it can get better at scoring future comments.

Publishers can choose what they want to do with the information they get from Perspective. For example, a publisher could flag comments for its own moderators to review and decide whether to include them in a conversation. Or a publisher could provide tools to help their community understand the impact of what they are writing—by, for example, letting the commenter see the potential toxicity of their comment as they write it. Publishers could even just allow readers to sort comments by toxicity themselves, making it easier to find great discussions hidden under toxic ones.

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We’ve been testing a version of this technology with The New York Times, where an entire team sifts through and moderates each comment before it’s posted—reviewing an average of 11,000 comments every day. That’s a lot of comments. As a result the Times has comments on only about 10 percent of its articles. We’ve worked together to train models that allows Times moderators to sort through comments more quickly, and we’ll work with them to enable comments on more articles every day.

Where we go from here

Perspective joins the TensorFlow library and the Cloud Machine Learning Platform as one of many new machine learning resources Google has made available to developers. This technology is still developing. But that’s what’s so great about machine learning—even though the models are complex, they’ll improve over time. When Perspective is in the hands of publishers, it will be exposed to more comments and develop a better understanding of what makes certain comments toxic.

While we improve the technology, we’re also working to expand it. Our first model is designed to spot toxic language, but over the next year we’re keen to partner and deliver new models that work in languages other than English as well as models that can identify other perspectives, such as when comments are unsubstantial or off-topic.

In the long run, Perspective is about more than just improving comments. We hope we can help improve conversations online.

Expanding Fact Checking at Google

Over the years we’ve heard from Google News users that our efforts to label stories ranging from local to satire to user-generated have helped expand their view of what is happening in the world. Last October we added a new Fact Check tag to help people find news stories that have been fact checked, so they can understand the value of what they’re reading. Soon after, we introduced the tag in France and Germany.

Starting today, people in Brazil, Mexico and Argentina can see fact check tagged articles in the expanded story box on news.google.com and in the Google News & Weather iOS and Android apps.

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Fact Check in Brazil

We’re also launching the fact check tag in these countries on news mode in Search. That means if you do a regular search and click the news tab, fact check articles will be elevated and annotated with the same fact check label that you would see in stories on Google News.

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Fact Check in news mode in Search

We’re able to do this work because the fact check industry itself has grown—there are now more than 120 organizations involved in tackling this issue—but our commitment to this area is not new. In Europe over the last couple of years we’ve been working with publishers on a number of efforts focused on fact checking. Last week, we announced CrossCheck, a joint project involving nearly 20 French newsrooms and the First Draft Coalition to debunk myths pertaining to the upcoming French elections.

In addition, as part of the Digital Initiative Fund, we’ve provided support for more than 10 projects looking at fact checking and authentication, adding six new initiatives at the end of last year:

  • U.K.-based Full Fact is building an automated fact-checker tailored for journalists.
  • Scotland’s the Ferret is using funding to build up a formal fact checking operation in their newsroom in the wake of the EU referendum.
  • Factmata, developed at University College London and University of Sheffield, will use machine learning to build tools to help readers better understand claims made in digital media content, such as news articles and political speech transcripts.
  • In Italy, Catchy’s team of scientists and media analysts, has created Compass, a fact checking platform to call out misleading stories, rebut bad facts and connect news events to reliable information.
  • In France, Le Monde’s 13-person fact checking unit called Les Décodeurs has received funding for their Hoaxbuster Decodex project.
  • Norway’s ambitious Leserkritikk (“Reader Critic”) project, currently running its prototype on Dagbladet.no, lets readers give specific and structured feedback on facts, language and mistakes in published content. 

These projects clearly illustrate a desire for more of this work, and we’re eager to bring the fact check tag to other countries around the world. In order to make this a reality, we need your help. Publishers who would like to see their work appear with the Fact Check tag should use the open ClaimReview schema from schema.org in their stories.  Adding this markup allows Google to find these stories and highlight the fact checking work that has gone into them.  For more information, head on over to our help center.

Project Shield: Defending Maka Angola

Rafael Marques De Morais is a journalist in Angola who runs Maka Angola, one of the largest independent news site in the country. Operating from Rafael’s kitchen table, Maka Angola may have a small staff, but its impact in Angola is massive. Their investigative journalism, covering topics from conflict diamonds, to wartime atrocities and crippling poverty, have given the citizens of Angola a platform where their voices can now be heard.

As a result of his coverage, Rafael has been threatened, thrown in jail and been the target of constant distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks to take Maka Angola offline. Rafael has been able to partner with Jigsaw’s Project Shield, ensuring that his site stayed online and continued its work.

The world’s news is under threat from DDoS attacks -- a simple and inexpensive way for anyone with an internet connection to take down a news organization anywhere in the world. This type of cyber attack is one of the most pernicious forms of censorship in the 21st century.

Jigsaw’s Project Shield is a free service that uses Google’s technology to protect independent news sites and human rights groups from DDoS attacks. In light of the rising threat, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced earlier this year that Shield is available to journalists, news sites and human rights organizations around the world for free.

Learn more about Project Shield here.

Project Shield: Defending Maka Angola

Rafael Marques De Morais is a journalist in Angola who runs Maka Angola, the largest independent news site in the country. Operating from Rafael’s kitchen table, Maka Angola may have a small staff, but its impact in Angola is massive. Their investigative journalism, covering topics from conflict diamonds, to wartime atrocities and crippling poverty, have given the citizens of Angola a platform where their voices can now be heard.

As a result of his coverage, Rafael has been threatened, thrown in jail and been the target of constant distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks to take Maka Angola offline. Rafael has been able to partner with Jigsaw’s Project Shield, ensuring that his site stayed online and continued its work.

The world’s news is under threat from DDoS attacks -- a simple and inexpensive way for anyone with an internet connection to take down a news organization anywhere in the world. This type of cyber attack is one of the most pernicious forms of censorship in the 21st century.

Jigsaw’s Project Shield is a free service that uses Google’s technology to protect independent news sites and human rights groups from DDoS attacks. In light of the rising threat, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced earlier this year that Shield is available to journalists, news sites and human rights organizations around the world for free.

Learn more about Rafael’s story and the work of Project Shield.