Google News Allowing Story Participants To Comment

Jamie found this analysis of Google News's foray into community commentary. They are starting it off by only allowing people involved with the story to comment — and participants must first be authenticated by email. The article rounds up other bloggers' views on the game-changing nature, and the possible dangers to Google, of this new feature. Here is a sample of comments to a Google News story.

Google News Comments+

[eboluuuh]

This is a lot better than simply thinking they're silent until they're quoted in a future article.

Good idea

[bcmm]

I've been to demonstrations which have been seriously misreported by mainstream media. I'm thinking of this not so much as a way to get extra eyewitness accounts of big events as as a way of correcting media which parrots government and police press releases.

Targetting Slashdot user base?

[sufijazz]

If they allowed every John, Rick and Larry to post comments on links to news stories, would that be like..oh I don't know...Gdot.org?

Re:Good idea

[Chyeld]

And exactly how would they verify by email address that you were at the demonstration? Oh yeah, you registered an email address at anarchist.org before you went....

This might be useful for 'human intrest' stories, and company/stock news stories, but I fail to see it being even doable for large scale stories like a demonstration, natural disaster, or etc.

Journalists without Journalism.

[amper]

This smacks to me of Google trying to figure out a way to appear journalistic without actually having to engage in journalism.

If they feel it so necessary to invite commentary from those actually involved in a story, then why do they not simply hire journalists to interact with such people? If their goal is simply to invite public commentary on news items, why do they not simply build a Slashcode server, or some other group discussion system that can achieve the same end?

Heck, why not use an NNTP server? NNTP is one of the most underused systems out there, and this sort of application is exactly the purpose for which it was designed. Google already has the Deja archives, so they cannot be unfamiliar with the concept, and if Google were to expose the public more to NNTP with an HTML gateway, it might actually revive interest in not only news servers in general, but in updating the NNTP protocol to incorporate some more modern mechanisms.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's great that they're starting to look at this idea. It's long overdue for news outlets to invite timely commentary on their articles, especially given the sorry state of journalism these days.

Re:Good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm with you on the mis-reporting.

I was on a flight that had to return to the airport. The galley had no electricity, and therefore no coffee (early morning - we can't have that!). In the next day's paper, the "cabin was filled with smoke". Yeah, right! I was sitting one row back and opposite the galley, full view of the coffee pot, and I never saw even a frog-fart's worth of smoke.

So much for our free press...free to sensationalize, alright!

Well, they did say it was free, not accurate.

This works as long as BOTH sides may comment

[Opportunist]

But what if one side can't? Not everyone has net access. Not everyone actually knows about it being on the Google news page when he is involved, even if he has access.

Of course, large businesses, governments and the like who can employ someone to monitor such activities will benefit from it. But you and me? Imagine you're getting into a legal battle with a large company. You have your hands full, meeting with lawyers and trying to keep from going under, do you have time to react to Google News? Hardly. Does the company you're suing (or that's suing you), on the other hand? With a few 100 to a few 1000 people working for them, most likely.

Re:Doctor Troll

[BalanceOfJudgement]

Agreed. 12 billion per year for 3000 smoking kids a day is what, $11,000 each? That doesn t sound too profitable to me, especially since the government will stick it to Big Tobacco later for these kid s admittedly poor decisions.

The $11,000 spent in one year for that one smoker can parlay into much, much more money for the tobacco company. The average smoker spends approximately $1600 per year on cigarettes directly [msn.com]. This means they'd only have to be a smoker for 6.5 years for the company to make a profit off of them, and most smokers smoke for much longer than that.

Multiply that over 1.1 million new smokers each year and you can see how profitable it really is. They wouldn't spend that much money if it weren't really so profitable.

But yes, I agree their advertising targets more than just children.

Google Grid anyone?

[cxreg]

Sure seems to me like Epic 2014 [robinsloan.com] is slowly coming to fruition

Raffle?

[Quiet_Desperation]

A raffle on how long before some is called a Nazi?

I take 2 to 3 milliseconds.