Can Google Save Local Media?

As the Internet undermines traditional media business models, no one has taken a bigger hit than the San Francisco Chronicle, the city's major daily. Yesterday, the Chron's parent company, Hearst Newspapers, announced that unless they secure major concessions from its unions (read: layoffs and salary cuts), it will have to close the paper altogether. Google has played no small role in redefining how people read the news, and last week, one of its most prominent executives launched a side project to see if he can save local reporting from the lethal dynamics that threaten papers like the Chron.

When Tim Armstrong isn't busy running Google's North and South American advertising arm, he's behind the Polar Capital Group, which has just funded Patch, a new company dedicated to providing online local reporting in small towns that newspapers can no longer afford to cover. So far, the company has set up one reporter in each of three New Jersey suburbs: South Orange, Maplewood, and Milburn. Patch is based out of New York, where former Time Out New York Editor in Chief Brian Farnham will try out the new model. The site will weave short, inevitably picayune stories about city government, traffic, and local businesses with photos and video, trying to keep local officials accountable in an era when the media are retrenching and scrambling to stay alive. (Interestingly, Jeff Jarvis, who runs the blog buzzmachine and has published the book What Would Google Do?, sits on Patch's editorial advisory board.)

At first glance, this is in keeping with "hyper-localism," the latest notion about how regional media outlets can offer unique content and stay financially viable in a world where so much information is free. But Armstrong's day job at Google has already raised fears that this is just another way for Google to dominate yet another advertising sector. The Muckety newsletter's Carol Eisenberg writes, "One can't help wondering whether this is a news experiment, or simply a new approach to sucking up local advertising dollars—one of the last sources of revenue for cash-starved local newspapers. And Valleywag's Owen Thomas suspects that Google is using Armstrong's project to sneak into local reporting and displace suburban papers without being tarred as a grasping, ravenous advertising monopoly.

"Could Patch be a Trojan horse for Google to get into the local news business?" he writes. "Google has struggled with local advertising, partly because there's not enough obviously local content online to advertise against. Google would spark a massive outcry if it got into the news business directly. But through a trusted proxy like Armstrong, it can keep a close eye—and move in once Armstrong has discovered his 'commercially viable way.' "

Is Armstrong valiantly using his fortune to save the world in that "Don't Be Evil" tradition? Or is he paving the way for Google to extend its stranglehold on our lives? And will local readers care either way? We'll just have to wait and see.