It’s a familiar refrain. Google News lost a court case brought in 2007 by Belgian newspaper association Copiepresse, which sought €49 million damages (Copiepresse even sued the European Commission for linking to its members’ stories). Until now, only individual UK publishers had grumbled, eg. Telegraph editor Will Lewis told a 2007 conference Google and Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) “are seeking to build a business model on the back of our own investment without recognition”.

But, now that newspaper advertising has fallen off a cliff in recent months, the industry is looking for lifelines in all directions. Now that Google has begun to host more European news wires’ stories, perhaps the newspapers will seek a similar arrangement.

MPs, too, called for support earlier this month and murmurings for a kind of “bailout” are growing. The societies’ letter stops short of such brazen a request, but does request “investment of public funds for training” in the publishers themselves and the NCTJ journalism training body. They also ask Burnham to stop local council newspapers competing with commercial rivals and that government uses local media to advertise local jobs.