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New Delhi: Google News Initiative has launched new partnerships with five news associations to provide financial grants and training to nearly 1,000 local publications across the US.

“This funding will help local publishers overcome tech challenges, and create strategies and tactics for driving audience growth, individual giving, and sponsorship revenue,” Google said in a blog post on Thursday.

Later this summer, the tech giant will launch ‘News Showcase’ in the US, in partnership with over 150 news publications, 90 percent of them local or regional.

The company first launched the News Showcase licensing programme and product experience for news organisations in 2020 and has since expanded to 22 countries globally with more than 2,300 participating publications.

With News Showcase, journalists get to select important stories to include in their curated News Showcase panels and add useful context to help readers understand key issues.

The panels then appear in Google News and Discover, sending readers directly to full articles on a publisher’s website. This helps publishers deepen relationships with their audiences and gives them more direct control of presentation and branding, according to the company.

Moreover, the company is updating the Following tab on Google News to help local publications surface more frequently on Google News and give readers an easier way to find the news that matters to them.

This tab will bring readers the latest updates from the topics, sources and locations they select to follow, like their favourite hobby, publication or their hometown.

The updated Follow feature will be available globally on Android soon and then expand to iOS later this year.

In the coming weeks, Google said it will launch a new survey feature, which will help publishers ask their readers questions to better understand their audience and interests, so they can serve more relevant content and advertisements.