Does your news organisation have under 500 employees? If so, you could get your hands on the latest Google cloud technology — for free

Google is offering new technology to local news organisations in a bid to promote innovative business methods and storytelling.

The Google News Initiative Cloud Program has made 200,000 G suite licences free for local news organisations to use for up to two years. Organisations with fewer than 500 employees can apply for up to 500 licences.

The suite will enable editors in the office and reporters in the field to collaborate and edit copy on a story in real time using secure, cloud-native applications such as Gmail, Docs, Drive, Hangouts and Calendar.

This is designed to help small and medium publishers manage the shift to digital journalism, rethink collaboration projects, improve reader engagement and grow more meaningful data insights.

It is already commonplace with leading publishers like the New York Times that uses Google Cloud to encode and preserve their entire photo archive of millions of photos.

Interested? For more information and how to apply for this initiative, head over to the website.

Managed to grab a G Suite for your news organisation? Get in touch with @journalismnews on Twitter and tell us how it is helping your newsroom

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