[Sigia-l] Google Needs People

[John McCrory]

Jan C. Wright wrote:
> I was looking for Iraq stuff. I checked off and on for a few days [snip]
> since it wasn't giving me what I wanted I stopped. 
And: 
> To me, it was a "top story," it was on NPR every morning, it seemed big 
> enough to be out there in the front runners, but it wasn't in the higher 
> levels of googlenews.

As I understand it, Google's algorithm selects and groups news articles
based on the the collective judgement of the editors of "more than 4,000"
online news sources around the world. Consequently, the lead stories it
chooses to present 'on top' may not match those that are the lead stories in
your small part of the world, or in the news sources you personally tend to
rely on; rather, they are on top simply because a lot of online news sites
around the globe chose to publish a story on the same subject. 

At the same time, from my experience following Google News, it seems that
Google resists the herd mentality that often overtakes our media when some
shocking story blots out everything else (shark attacks, Chandra Levy...);
While CNN and others go wall-to-wall for several hours with the sniper story
for example, Google will offer that of course, but also will feature lots of
other stories that are breaking elsewhere in the world or country.

A lot of folks who are complaining about Google News seem to be upset that
it doesn't do things that it probably was never designed to do, and no one
from Google ever claimed it would do. It's not trying to replace your
newspaper, or replace the work of reporters and editors. It's not trying to
be your personal news service, selecting only the stories *you* want to
read. It's not trying to be an arbiter of what is news. Rather, Google News
is merely a barometer of what other people have decided is news.

Google's cheeky comment about not harming humans turned out not to be the
best PR tactic; I suppose the Google News team has now learned that listserv
posters, bloggers, pundits, columnists, and (especially) media critics
apparently share an underdeveloped sense of humor. If, on the other hand,
Google had announced that their news headlines were selected and grouped by
human editors, what do you think the reaction would have been? "What right
does Google have to decide what's news!?" is my guess.

   John McCrory
   Webmaster 
   Vera Institute of Justice
   http://www.vera.org/