Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog » Google News

Nieman Journalism Lab: Only 11% original reporting on Google/China hacking story

Judith Townend — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:55:14 +0000

So where does news aggregation get in the way of original reporting? Nieman Journalism Lab took a look at one big story – the attack on Google in China – and analysed its treatment by various news organisations. A spreadsheet shows the full results (download file at this link).

[Jonathan Stray] I chose a single big story and read every single version listed on Google News to see who was doing the work. Out of the 121 distinct versions of last week’s story about tracing Google’s recent attackers to two schools in China, 13 (11 per cent) included at least some original reporting. And just seven organisations (six percent) really got the full story independently.

Full post at this link…

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Digits Blog: AP stories come back to Google News

Laura Oliver — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:09:52 +0000

Stories from the Associated Press (AP) are once more appearing on Google’s News search engine, ending a near seven-week absence from the site.

The two parties have been negotiating a licensing agreement and talks were stalled by the AP’s monitoring of its articles to and through Google News, the Wall Street Journal’s Digits blog reports.

Google and AP said negotiations on an agreement were ongoing despite the return of AP stories.

Full post at this link…

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Google News to ‘recrawl’ for story changes

Judith Townend — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 14:39:02 +0000

Google News introduced a new recrawl feature this week, which allows the search engine to revisit news articles for changes – most frequently on the first day after Google finds them.

For readers, this feature is intended to reduce the number of outdated headlines and dead links you might find. And for publishers, rest assured that we’ll be back to find your latest stories and updates as soon as we can.

Full post at this link…

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SearchEngineLand.com: New AP stories no longer appearing in Google News

Judith Townend — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 10:09:15 +0000

New Associated Press (AP) stories, hosted by Google itself, are no longer appearing in Google News, reports Danny Sullivan for SearchEngineLand.com.

It’s true. Since Dec. 24, Google has no longer added new AP content, something the company confirmed with me today [Friday]. I received this statement:

“We have a licensing agreement with the Associated Press that permits us to host its content on Google properties such as Google News. Some of that content is still available today. At the moment we’re not adding new hosted content from the AP.”

So why not? The statement doesn’t explain. But it’s reasonable to assume it’s related to the ongoing talks between Google and the Associated Press.

Full post at this link…

(via paidContent.org)

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Google introduces option for five-a-day free click limit

Judith Townend — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 10:06:23 +0000

Google is to allow publishers to limit free access to content found via Google News, it announced in a blog post yesterday.

Publishers using restricted access systems will be able to prevent Google News users looking at more than five pages of content a day without registration or subscription.

In the post, Google said:

“We’re happy to see that a number of publishers are already using First Click Free [a system allowing very first article view by a Google News user] we’ve found that some who might try it are worried about people abusing the spirit of First Click Free to access almost all of their content.

“As most users are generally happy to be able to access just a few pages from these premium content providers, we’ve decided to allow publishers to limit the number of accesses under the First Click Free policy to five free accesses per user each day.

“This change applies to both Google News publishers as well as websites indexed in Google’s Web Search. We hope that this encourages even more publishers to open up more content to users around the world!”

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ReadWriteWeb: Google allows readers to customise news

Laura Oliver — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:14:31 +0000

Google has created a new way for its users to save customised news searches and publish/share these results with others in their own ’sections’.

“Custom sections directory, which gives users of some of our English-language editions the expanded ability to create comprehensive sections to put on their Google News homepage or share with other users,” says the announcement on the Google News blog.

Users will therefore be able to create their own news sections outside of those already offered by Google News.

As ReadWriteWeb explains:

“Part dashboard, part feed reader, and all user-friendly, this service promises to be both popular and useful. Users can create sections based on keywords and then publish their sections to directories for sharing with others.

“Multiple sections can be added to a user’s Google News homepage, creating a customized, keyword-based digest. this feature is turning Google News into the infinitely segmented, infinitely remixable modern newspaper; and with all the sources Google indexes, it’s just what users need. Unfortunately, it also deals yet another blow to suffering old media publications, many of whom aren’t too happy about the distribution of their content in the first place.”

via Google Enters Customizable News Dashboard Market.

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OJR: ‘Does your site really need to be in Google News?’

Judith Townend — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:59:03 +0000

Just how important is it to get your site into Google News? Robert Niles raises the question on the Knight Digital Media Center’s Online Journalism Review.

“For many online publishers, affiliated with newspapers or not, the Holy Grail of traffic is inclusion in the Google News index.

(…)

“But is inclusion in that index or other search engines’ news indices really worthwhile for the majority of online news publishers? I’m going to argue… no. (Well, at least it’s not worth making a fuss over.)”

Full post at this link…

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Nieman Journalism Lab: Google News and the ‘blog’ label

Judith Townend — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:17:23 +0000

So what’s a blog and does it matter? Google News has started – arbitrarily it seems – applying the ‘(blog)’ label to some sites and not others.

It’s all a bit weird, says the Nieman Journalism Lab’s Zachary M. Seward.

“On both technical and philosophical levels, there’s no meaningful difference between blogs that publish news and news sites that aren’t published as blogs. Many news organizations place material on both types of platforms without considering the content any different. Some use blogging software like WordPress to produce sites that look nothing like blogs.”

His analogy explains it brilliantly:

“Dividing content along these lines is like classifying brownies based on whether they were baked in aluminum or glass pans. There’s no difference, and it obscures what you really want know: if they contain chocolate chips.”

Full post at this link…

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Update on Futurity.org: the science news site run by US universities

Judith Townend — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 13:47:58 +0000

Last week Journalism.co.uk reported on Futurity.org, publicised as an online news service through which US university departments will publish their scientific findings directly online in a digestible format – a project designed to combat a reduction in science reporting in mainstream media.

We were interested to learn that the site would be included in Google News and asked Lisa Lapin, one of Futurity’s founders and assistant vice president for communications at Stanford University, for more information.

“Google News is recognising Futurity as a news organisation and will be capturing our news for search, and for display within Google News, as they would another news organisation,” she told Journalism.co.uk.

A release initially announced 35 partners, although we now count a total of 39 participating universities featured on the site. All are members of the Association of American Universities (AAU), an association of leading public and private research universities in the United States and Canada.

We asked Lapin if they would be adding even more to the service:

“As for partners, we wanted to begin with a reasonable size and institutions that have strong research programmes – thus it was natural for us to include AAU universities,” she said.

“To be elected to the AAU is quite an accomplishment and there is already criteria that we didn’t need to develop. There are 62 AAU universities in the US and Canada. We will discuss expanding futurity.org membership, but we would need to develop some criteria to assure that the news remains truly the greatest discoveries coming out of research universities.”

The project has attracted some criticism, as reported by the San Jose Mercury News:

“Any information is better than no information,” said Charlie Petit, a former science reporter at U.S. News & World Report and the San Francisco Chronicle.

“The quality of research university news releases is quite high. They are rather reliable,” he added. “But they are completely absent any skepticism or investigative side.”

Petit followed up with a lengthier comment and example on the Knight Science Journalism Tracker, and said that press releases published by Futurity should be clearly labelled as such:

“Press releases can and often do carry real news, and in professional and ethical style. In aggregate, they serve reporters and the public in an essential way. However: They may be science writing. They are not independent journalism that seeks (if not always successfully) to get wide opinion and angles on the news. This is not a fine point. It is essential that the distinction be clear.”

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – optimising your website for Google News

Laura Oliver — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 08:10:52 +0000

SEO: Google News has released a series of tips and video advice on optimising your website for Google News. The video at this link helps explain how the aggregator works and how to get your content found. Tipster: Laura Oliver.

To submit a tip to Journalism.co.uk, use this link - we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.