If the Google-AP deal means that national and international stories favor the AP site in the Google News search, that’s OK. Those stories never meant much for local news sites anyway.
But if Google is serving up local news stories on top of the original local-market story, that’s a problem. According to this Lost Remote post, that appears to be the case.
Local news sites should raise a ruckus with AP.
How would the algorithm ID the original? The version AP moves needs to have the inverse of ‘PIONEER PRESS OUT’ on a breaking news photo shot by the Strib.
And in cases like the paper I work at, our story might hit one of our larger sister papers’ sites first and then move to the wire — so how does Google News know whether to ‘credit’ us or the other paper?
Obviously, Google pays a few folks to figure out things like this. Depending on how the deal works with AP.
It also depends what wire it moves on … supposedly, the Google deal doesn’t include state wires, but this story sure sounds like a state-wire story.