Google introduces News Lab, a resource for journalists - Los Angeles Times
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Technology and the Internet

Google introduces News Lab, a resource for journalists

Google is launching a slate of tools to help reporters sort through and understand the Internet's data.

Google is launching a slate of tools to help reporters sort through and understand the Internet’s data.

(Paul Sakuma / AP)
By Tracey Lien
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In addition to its mission of “organizing the world’s information,” Google is now trying to help newsrooms around the world make sense of that information.

On Monday, the Mountain View, Calif., tech giant announced News Lab, an initiative that offers tools, data sets and media partnerships to help reporters sort through the vast amount of online data.

News Lab features interactive tutorials on how to get the most out of tools like Maps, YouTube and Fusion Tables, as well as an update to the Google Trends platform, which lets journalists track trends in Google searches.

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As part of the initiative, the company announced partnerships with media start-ups such as Matter and Hacks/Hackers, which involves financial support from Google and mentorship from Google engineers to help them build their businesses. The company also announced three projects that will support citizen reporting, each making use of platforms like YouTube, Medium and the Witness Media Lab.

Google has been criticized in the past by news publishers for scraping news from their sites and using it for free.

Twitter: @traceylien

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Technology and the Internet
Tracey Lien

Tracey Lien covered Silicon Valley and the technology industry for The Times’ business section before leaving in 2018 to pursue her MFA at the University of Kansas. A Sydney native, she came to the U.S. because the servings are bigger. She enjoys perpetuating lies about Australian animals, specifically drop bears and boxing kangaroos.

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