To underline Google’s commitment to local news, we ran a campaign that showcased that support and backed the message with a $15 million buy in local papers.

I wrote the hero ad, an encomium praising local news as the keepers of community knowledge. One publisher was so taken with the copy, he quoted it in a column titled “Thank you, Google.”

“You may have seen this published in the paper in mid-August,” he wrote, after opening the column with my words. “I wished I’d written it. But no, it was part of a full-page ad purchased by Google. I couldn’t have said it better.”