[Infowarrior] - Google News lets newsmakers comment on stories

[Richard Forno]

Freedom from the press: Google News lets newsmakers comment on stories

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070808-who-needs-journalists-google-n
ews-to-let-newsmakers-comment-on-stories.html

By Nate Anderson | Published: August 08, 2007 - 10:36AM CT

Beginning this week, Google News will start posting user comments, but only
from people actually featured in news stories. Newspapers that were unhappy
about Google News using snippets of their articles will probably be even
less pleased to see the new feature deployed, since Google could become an
even more formidable player when it starts hosting original content.

Here's how the new system will work: people or organizations that are
mentioned in news stories can submit comments to the Google News team, which
will then display those comments‹unedited‹alongside the Google News links to
those stories.

The new system will at first be deployed only within the US, but Google is
open to expanding it to other regions if the trial goes well.

This raises a number of questions that the announcement does not attempt to
answer, such as how Google will vet the comments to ensure they come from
the claimed source (watch this space for the first "Google News punked!"
stories in the following weeks). Google is also a backer of algorithm-driven
solutions as opposed to those which require human interaction and don't
scale as well. Vetting comments and verifying identities doesn't sound like
the sort of thing which lends itself to an algorithm, but we'll assume
Google has thought this through and has some sort of plan. Let's turn
instead to the most interesting implication.

Once the new system is in place, Google News will feature something it has
never had before: original content. There's a certain amount of
"originality" in aggregating news sources from around the world and
organizing them into easy-to-click topics, of course, but the content has
all been owned by others, and some of those others have been less than happy
about their inclusion in Google News.

If the new comments feature takes off and Google News becomes a central
clearinghouse for those who want to respond to pieces in which they appear,
the site's popularity would no doubt skyrocket. News junkies would have to
visit Google News‹and not any particular newspaper‹to find out if, say,
Barry Bonds objected to a characterization of him on the USA Today sports
page.

This would clearly be good for Google, but it also has implications for
journalism. With the rise of the web, journalists have already lost some of
their power as gatekeepers; anyone with a blog can easily tell their own
side of a story if a journalist "gets it wrong." But such responses have
been scattered across the Internet, and readers generally have to go looking
for them. Bringing them all together in one place and sticking them right
beside the stories from the professional journalists gives those in the
headlines more power to tell their own side of the story.

It could also impact news brands. While major papers like The Financial
Times, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal will have no trouble
keeping a high profile, smaller brands might. That's because people can go
directly to Google News to get their headlines rather than trolling around
to the front pages of a dozen daily papers. This is already happening, but
the comments feature could accelerate the trend by combining Google's ease
of use with exclusive content. When readers can get all the headlines plus
unfiltered reactions from those in the news, why go elsewhere?

While this is all possible, we'll really need to see what uptake is like,
especially among those who might submit comments. Much like celebrity TV
news, Google News need to attract comments from the "big fish" to keep
readers interested. If random third-tier analysts and unknown CEOs are the
only ones who submit, interest will remain... reduced.