Interesting commentary over at the Blog Herald on Google News, and its (albeit temporary) inclusion of a Nazi site, while ignoring some of the A-list bloggers.
Well, back in 2003, I was actually reporting news on my activist blog, and try as I might, I could not get Google to get past the idea that all blogs were simply personal journals and nothing else. Now they’ve gotten past that issue and recognized that a blog can contain any kind of content, I haven’t even tried to submit that blog to Google News.
That’s because over time, the focus of the DesertLight Journal has changed. Instead of publishing reports contributed by activists all over the world, it now includes much more commentary, with a US-centric approach. It’s become a jumping-off point, at times, for discussion in other places, such as forums and listservs.
Does that kind of conversation constitute news? I’m not really sure. It does appear that the definition of what is and what is not news is changing. I’ve always defined news as something happening, and the reporting of same. Does the reporting at some point become the news? Doe the commentary on the reporting also become news?
Heck, I dunno. These larger questions are bit much for this early in the morning ;>)
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