MEDIA & MARKETING
Quoted in the news? Please post a comment Google feature letting news sources have a say is a challenge to traditional journalism
NEW YORK - THE days when the journalist had the last say about a subject are long gone.
This thought is usually expressed by repeating - and then dismissing as outdated - the words of late American journalist A.J. Liebling: 'Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.'
And 'owning a press' today is almost as simple as publishing a blog.
But not all presses are made equal.
The leaders in online news are the familiar names - CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, The New York Times, BBC, The Washington Post and so on - so a source's response to a journalist's work would not necessarily carry the same volume as the original article, even online.
Google News, an increasingly popular way to get news online, may tip that balance, however, with a feature it calls 'Comments From People In The News'.
The idea is simple: If you have been quoted in an article that appears on Google News, which presents links and summaries from 4,500 news sources, including the familiar big players, you can post a comment that will be paired with that article.
Since it was introduced earlier this year, the feature has largely existed under the radar.
Roughly 150 total comments are available, and they stay up for a month, with five or six being added each day to replace those dropping off.
Thus far, Google News has used e-mail messages to encourage people quoted in articles to submit comments.
'They sent me an e-mail and gave me a link,' said Mr Joel Downs, president of the Fort Worth chapter of Citizens for Immigration Reform, an advocacy group that is trying to make statutory changes in Texas regarding illegal migrants.
He said he was pleased with the way he was quoted in an article in The Fort Worth Star-Telegram after a five-minute interview with reporter Patrick McGee.
Mr Downs decided to expand on the story since he had been given the opportunity.
So he wrote an analogy comparing illegal immigrants with people who join a '20 items or less' line at the grocery store with an overloaded cart - an analogy that was not included in the article.
The people behind Google News emphasise that they are not in the business of journalism. The comments are not edited and when staff members solicit comments from a source in an article, all sources are contacted. Google said it is still early to evaluate the success or failure of the feature as it currently affects only the English version of Google News.
But it is yet another example of Google expanding into the content-generating business, as opposed to the content-searching business.
With efforts like book scanning or its Blogger service or the recently unveiled 'knol' project - under which specialists write encyclopedia-type articles - Google is actively adding information to the world, not merely organising it.
What will it mean for journalists? They will definitely still have a role. The lesson that the comments show is the numbing amount of material that journalists, the original information filter, must wade through to create a coherent article.
(with thanks to ST/25 Dec 07/off NYT)
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