Could Google bail out struggling newspaper industry?

Google, using a five-step program, could help the newspaper industry pull out of its tailspin, according to this interesting story from Portfolio magazine. There are some who argue that Google, along with Craigslist, have contributed to the demise of newspapers, particularly the classified advertising portion of the business. There may be truth to that, but it's too late to do much about it. If newspaper publishers want to become someone other than the folks designated to re-arrange the deck chairs on the Titanic, they need to learn to play nicely with Google.I've written about how Google is beneficial to newspapers in a previous blog. I would argue that Google does far more good for newspapers than damage. Who else with Google's oomph, provides an easy way to search for our content and free links to kjonline.com and onlinesentinel.com? Yet, some criticize Google News for stealing newspaper content. Others have gone much further. A group of Belgian newspapers took Google to court for copyright infringement three years ago and won. Am I missing something here? Why fight something that benefits you? Here's a basic example of how Google helps us: Go to Google News and type in one of the towns in our circulation area, which takes up a huge swath of the middle portion of the state from the Canadian border almost to the midcoast. You'll likely come up with a list of stories from the KJ or Sentinel. I have Augusta set up as my local story feed on Google News, but I could easily set up other towns, simply by changing the zip code in the browser navigation tool bar. If I want to read stories about my hometown of Hallowell, I type 04347 (Hallowell's zip code). And there pop up up dozens of story links, mostly to KJonline articles. What's wrong with that? Is it bad that Google News helps us reach a broader audience that we might not otherwise? Every day I put together a report on our web traffic. I'm able to measure just about anything that happens on our sites, including, in many cases, where our traffic comes from. Not surprisingly, Google easily sends us the most traffic of any external web site. And it doesn't cost us a dime. I think Google can help newspapers in many ways. Maybe the five-step program in the Portfolio article has some merit. But we in this industry need to learn to help ourselves and to take advantage of what Google already offers. We need to become search engine optimization experts. We need to learn to use the awesome (and mostly free) tools Google has. Most importantly, we need to capitalize on the free traffic Google sends us. Newspapers can't swim against the tide that is the continuing growth of the web as a news and information source and certainly can't make headway against a tsunami like Google.