Interview with Google's European vice president

[Keyword: online journalism]. The latest issue of Press Gazette features a fascinating double-page interview with the vice president of Google Europe, Nikesh Arora - the angle being Google's impact on news production, and the internet's impact on the news industry generally.

You can find a chopped-down version on the Press Gazette website (presumably to force readers to subscribe) and sadly the author, Rob McGibbon, has not updated his own website with any details. But for those interested in the salient points (rather than the first few hundred words, which contains none of them), here are a few juicy quotes. If you want to read more, hey, why not subscribe to Press Gazette? Perhaps the money will help them make more improvements to their website?*

On changes to the news industry:

"[Newspapers] have to pay attention to ... the unbundling of the package
... The internet is forcing a re-thinking of what is the package for a newspaper
... What elements in the bundle are going to survive?

"There are fantastic assets that newspapers could leverage more ... the
journalist who can write comment pieces and editorial stuff ... access to
opinion leaders around the world ... their ability to write objectively and in
line with the brand of the newspaper... That element of trust is important.

"What is not fully embraced is the element of interactivity with them that
consumers want. Also, [newspapers] don't leverage archives [enough]

"I believe there is a much larger opportunity for the provincial paper, because [local content] is very hard to globalise. [They] also have a much more loyal community."

On changes for journalists:

"I would definitely say that all journalists ... need to become bloggers... If the established journalist brands don't become bloggers, they will leave the door open."

*Good to see the use of Del.icio.us and Technorati links on the website, as well as related stories. Here's hoping for more improvements so us bloggers can plug it even more...