Podcast: Lucy Kueng on how Silicon Valley has changed journalism

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Lucy Kueng, a Google Digital News Senior Research Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, is one of the go-to names for macro and micro industry analysis, and has a tonne of other roles in the industry that allow her to see the bigger picture.

Media Voices Podcast spoke with her about journalism’s perverse relationship with Silicon Valley, whether publications can make it across the Valley of Death, and how external pressures change internal newsroom structure.

“Over the past couple of years newspapers and Silicon Valley have fought like cats and dogs. From the tech giants’ perspective, they were just in the right place at the right time to monetise the burgeoning digital audiences through advertising at scale,” says Chris Sutcliffe, host of the Media Voices podcast.

“From the publisher perspective those same companies did nothing less than steal that revenue away and, by dangling access to those audiences in front of the ever more cash starved newspapers, force the papers to fall in line with the goals of Silicon Valley. The relationship between the two is, to say the least, fraught.”

Lucy Kueng’s experience across the industry has given her rare insight into the relationship between the two. In this interview she discussed the nuances of the connection, pointing out that while Silicon Valley directly and indirectly forced changes on publishers, it also revolutionised how newspapers thought about news delivery and product development.

It’s always a good sign when you come away from an interview with a greater appreciation for the grey in what was previously a black-and-white issue, and Lucy’s interview did that for me – and also made me feel more hopeful about the future of journalism.

Chris Sutcliffe, host of the Media Voices Podcast

In the news round-up the Media Voices team discuss the BBC’s new show on Facebook Watch, the potential impacts of the Copyright Directive, and gush over Bauer’s latest magazine launch. Peter does impressions of a stuffy English gent and Katy Perry.