[Offtopic] Google News 'Right of Reply'

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

Hi there,

Google news is to give a 'right of reply' to news-makers:

--
'Perspectives About The News From People In The News'

The Official Blog from the Team at Google News. Tuesday, August 7, 2007 
By Dan Meredith and Andy Golding, Software Engineers, Google News Team
<http://googlenewsblog.blogspot.com/2007/08/perspectives-about-news-from-
people-in.html>

We wanted to give you a heads-up on a new, experimental feature we'll be 
trying out on the Google News home page. 

Starting this week, we'll be displaying reader comments on stories in 
Google News, but with a bit of a twist...

We'll be trying out a mechanism for publishing comments from a special 
subset of readers: those people or organizations who were actual 
participants in the story in question. 

Our long-term vision is that any participant will be able to send in their 
comments, and we'll show them next to the articles about the story.

Comments will be published in full, without any edits, but marked 
as "comments" so readers know it's the individual's perspective, rather 
than part of a journalist's report.

As always, Google News will direct readers to the professionally-written 
articles and news sources our algorithms have determined are relevant for 
a topic. From bloggers to mainstream journalists, the journalists who help 
create the news we read every day occupy a critical place in the 
information age. 

But we're hoping that by adding this feature, we can help enhance the news 
experience for readers, testing the hypothesis that -- whether they're 
penguin researchers or presidential candidates-- a personal view can 
sometimes add a whole new dimension to the story.

We're beginning this only in the US and then, based on how things go, 
we'll work to expand it to other languages and editions. 

We're excited about the possibilities of this new feature and we hope you 
are too, so if you've been covered in a news article please send us your 
comments and we'll work with you to post it on Google News.
--

Cheers, people
Stephen Loosley
Victoria, Australia