|
Tuesday, October 28, 2003
Drawing a line in the surf 
| | Trudy Schuett of DesertLight Journal details her issues with Google News' judgment calls about what is and what isn't a legitimate news source. DLJ is a news journal that operates with a blog format. Here's a portion of her critique: |
| | This would say to me that Google is prepared to believe anyone who tells them they are a news source, yet for some unknown reason, for them, sometimes a blog is a news source, and sometimes it is not. |
| | The DLJ is not in any way a personal journal or diary -- I work much the same way as any small newspaper would. My sources all over the world send me their newsletters, their press releases and notices of upcoming and current events, as well as features and opinion pieces. I then determine whether they fit the criteria of my publication, and then publish or not as I see fit. Because of the blogging technology made available to me by Blog City, I can often publish many times in a day... |
| | One of the reasons I'm such a blog evangelist is that this is what I was expecting when I first went online in 1995. How was I to know the technology hadn't yet been invented? But blogging technology is exactly the thing that will help provide the world with better, more efficient news coverage. Those stories that once went begging, or were never covered by traditional media due to ideological, or time and space concerns, or even financial reasons in considering advertisers, can now have the ability to be presented to the public. |
What news is fit to reprint?
| | I've been hearing from people with news sites that happen also to be blogs, or that operate in the blog format (most recent items on top, permalinks for each story, first person singular voice, blogroll in a sidebar, etc.), all saying that Google News is making a mistake by excluding them from its thousands of legitimate news sources — even while it includes press releases. |
| | In Google's defense, the service is still in BETA (the all-caps are theirs). And they're looking for feedback, as it says here: |
| | As we continue to improve Google News, we'll be adding more news sources and fine-tuning our algorithms. Your opinions and feedback can help us with this process. What news sources would you like to see added? What advanced search features would be helpful? |
| | So let's give it to them, and do it respectfully. I have some thoughts, which I'll post later when I have time. Right now I'm prepping for a keynote I'm giving later today. |
Copyright 2008 The Doc Searls Weblog
|
