Google Invests $1.2M To Develop Publishing Platform With WordPress, Others

Google announced Monday an investment of $1.2 million to create a news publishing platform with Automattic/WordPress. The platform, called Newspack, aims to provide “a fast, secure, low-cost publishing system” for small newsrooms.The Lenfest Institute for Journalism, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and Civil Media also collectively contributed another $1 million to the project.In this project, Google also steps into an advisory role, aside from becoming a financial backer. The platform is being created to help small publishers that follow Google’s best practices write articles without having to worry about technical issues of publishing.