This article is based on my perception of the content of the topic on the Google News for Publishers community.
Publishers that have been approved prior to around December 2019 are living by different rules as per how content surfaces in Google News and Top Stories.
In today's system, quality doesn't matter. Credentials are irrelevant. Even traffic is unimportant (save for a possible near-unachievable threshold that may or may not be legitimate).
The mainstream media has invested millions of dollars in credibility. Is Google actively trying to kill niche journalism?
Yes, publishers think that Google is killing niche journalism, but they may not know it yet. Most mainstream media companies still operate under the naive belief that Google is like, ahhh, we get it. There's just a lot of stuff that's been deemed "not credible" by Google.
I don't believe Google actively attempts to kill niche journalism. I do think that the more general Google algorithm aims to get rid of anything that isn't "news".
There are a number of other search engines out there that may rank niche content a bit differently than Google. For example, Bing. They have a dedicated media team that will work with publishing partners to position a broad spectrum of media pieces.
I fully understand that an earnest spam cleanup is necessary, yet I also fully realize that this isn't the way to handle the required cleansing.
And worst of all, Google doesn't realize that they are creating a system that is designed to do just that. It's a full-blown machine. It eats media.
What Google doesn't get is that they're creating a monster. They're slowly, but surely, killing independent, niche journalism.
