The headlines on the Google News homepage are selected entirely by a computer algorithm, based on many factors including how often and on what sites a story appears elsewhere on the web. This is very much in the tradition of Google's web search, which relies heavily on the collective judgment of web publishers to determine which sites offer the most valuable and relevant information. Google News relies in a similar fashion on the editorial judgment of online news organizations to determine which stories are most deserving of inclusion and prominence on the Google News page.
I notice some unusual things on Google News from time to time. For example, twice recently I have seen "stories" given big promotion that come from extremelt biased source - once from the left, once from the right.
This may be exactly what Google expects - or it may be that some folks out there have discovered how to beat the system and get their point of view promoted as news.
In any event, I recommend reading this page, if you haven't done so already. It explains why Google is not the New York Times - or any other news agency you may know. It is also worthw hile to study the Google News Advanced Search" if you haven't done so.
In the final analysis Google seems to me to be a measure of what is regarded as important news - a sort of machine-generated consensus. In the final analysis, that doesn't make it objective or particularly good.
Posted by Greg Stone at November 6, 2003 01:32 PM | TrackBack