Google News Lab

The Google News Lab is a global team at Google whose mission is to "collaborate with journalists and entrepreneurs to help build the future of media". Launched in 2015, the team works with news organizations to help address industry challenges by providing training and access to emerging technologies for reporting and storytelling.

The Google News Lab was added to the Google News Initiative when it launched in 2018.

Combating misinformation
Google News Lab was a founding partner of the fact-checking coalition First Draft, which launched in 2015. In 2017, Google helped First Draft launch new collaborative reporting models to verify news stories during the UK, French and German elections.

The News Lab also provides free training for journalists in how to "discover and debunk false news and misinformation," both in-person and on its training website.

Newsroom diversity
In 2017, the Google News Lab partnered with the American Society of News Editors (ASNE) on its annual Newsroom Employment Diversity Survey. The survey showed how hundreds of newsrooms across the U.S. had changed since 2001. It also compared newsroom diversity counts to census data to show how newsrooms compare to their local area in terms of race and gender.

Local news
The News Lab has trained more than 9,000 local reporters in the U.S. through a partnership with the Society for Professional Journalists. Training programs for local newsrooms also exist in Europe, the Asia Pacific, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa.

Criticism
The Google News Lab and Google's Digital News Initiative have been criticized as buy-offs of the newsrooms after its advertising monopoly led to countless layoffs in newsrooms.