[Sigia-l] GoogleNews

[Michael Kay]

teresa-
Don't get me wrong-- I do think there is a great value in google 
news. But I still don't believe it would be very objective. How those 
sites are polled and weighted are the human elements. And as you say, 
the ranking of those stories are subject to what the editors out 
there are doing. As far as accuracy, I think that a google engine can 
be as relevant to getting the news as the search engine is to the 
web. When you have no other means, Google is great to find a web 
site, but it's still not always as good as a recommended link from a 
friend.
--Mike

At 10:18 PM -0700 9/24/02, Teresa Torres wrote:
>On Tue, Sep 24, 2002 at 09:51:23PM -0400, Michael Kay wrote:
>>I think google news is mainly a novel idea, but a damn good one. It's
>>probably better as a wire service for journalists than for mainstream
>>consumption. News needs an editorial voice. No algorithm could
>>consistently pick the 3 most relevant stories to lead with. (Even
>>human editors have trouble figuring this out.)
>
>I think this is precisely the brilliance of the google news idea. 
>Picking lead stories is subjective. Real people have a hard time 
>doing it. So why not take a census of what a collection of real 
>people subjectively decided and treat them like votes. I think this 
>is exactly where smart algorithms can help with problems that are 
>difficult for us humans. Granted, this still relies upon real humans 
>to poll - the thousands of editors who pick the lead stories on the 
>4,000 sites Google uses.
>
>Google, didn't remove the editor from the process, instead they came 
>up with a way to collate a set of subjective choices in an attempt 
>to find commanlity - perhaps remove some of the subjectivity. I 
>think it's a fantastic experiment.
>
>Teresa