Google News is adding comments

[anhinga_anhinga]

"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."

via http://instapundit.com/archives2/007959.php

Comments

[anhinga-anhinga.livejournal.com]

In any case, the change this might bring is potentially very big..

[http://users.livejournal.com/_rowan_tree_/]

Especially in sales of rotten tomatoes, protective suits, and lawn chairs. Yes, we need more fights online - blogs are not enough!

[anhinga-anhinga.livejournal.com]

It's certainly better than the current situation, when it's very difficult to defend yourself against the bad press, or to correct the distortions in an interview, etc..

A bad news for professional journalists, that's for sure, but.. I am not sympathetic, somehow ;-)

OK, let's talk seriously

[http://users.livejournal.com/_rowan_tree_/]

An effective defense of oneself in the eyes of general public requires:
- good writing skills, including the ability to logically organize and motivate your arguments, and to keep your presentation short and to the point
- some level of diplomacy and political thinking

This is pretty DAMN hard! I am in the business, sort of - quite a bit of my time is spent in written communications aimed at convincing people to give me or my students money or give my students jobs/university admission, etc. I am telling you - it takes years of experience to learn this sort of writing. A person off the street does not have that experience, so they will just shoot themselves in the foot one way or the other, given a public forum.

People who have the ability to perform at the level comparable to that of professional journalists are either professional journalists themselves or other people who are experienced in PR process, and many already have public venues to present their side of the story. Thus, it's another case when rich get richer and poor get poorer.

Re: OK, let's talk seriously

[anhinga-anhinga.livejournal.com]

They can get help, then..

It's not all that often that a person is a subject of a story (especially, someone from the street), and it is possible to get assistance.. What this mechanism should provide is mitigation of the abuses caused by the access to a lot of bandwidth, which major news organization enjoy..

Yes, with the access to bandwidth come the opportunities for shooting oneself in the foot ;-) That's OK too ;-)

Re: OK, let's talk seriously

[http://users.livejournal.com/_rowan_tree_/]

it is possible to get assistance - I'll tell The Green One to major in English. It looks like there will be a new profession - public writer, kinda like a lawyer, to defend a person from bad publicity.

Re: OK, let's talk seriously

[anhinga-anhinga.livejournal.com]

Yes, at least when one does not have fluent friends ;-)

People pay for this kind of services now too, they just cannot get access regardless, or the access costs a lot..

Re: OK, let's talk seriously

[http://users.livejournal.com/_rowan_tree_/]

People write letters to editor, many of these are published.
The problem is that if the average level of these comments is low, no one is going to pay attention to those that are above average. To raise the quality, the process has to be moderated, but if we don't trust journalists/editors to moderate it, whom do we trust?

Re: OK, let's talk seriously

[anhinga-anhinga.livejournal.com]

That's the whole point -- we don't trust journalists/editors anymore.. They were exposed as being a completely untrustworthy group of people.. We just don't believe them anymore.. We trust them about as much as we trust politicians these days ;-)

Which is why there should be an unmoderated channel, or, rather, a channel moderated by some unbiased rule, just to protect from saturation, -- such as the rule of being mentioned in the story in question..

Re: OK, let's talk seriously

[http://users.livejournal.com/_rowan_tree_/]

Well, it seems to me that the problem is broader, and yet shallower than you presented it: we don't trust *anyone* anymore (doctors, scientists, engineers, writers, programmers, cashiers, clergy, atheists, anyone who gets paid for anything, anyone who claims they don't benefit from what they do - you name it!).
However, the amount of lie that these people can produce without someone else being vocal about it is relatively small. This includes journalists: some facts are distorted, but many are true, and if anything has been majorly misrepresented, we will know, and minor misrepresentations don't matter for the general public.Otherwise why bother reading the news in the first place?

Re: OK, let's talk seriously

[anhinga-anhinga.livejournal.com]

The point is, if someone is written about in a high-bandwidth forum, it is good to provide for an opportunity to respond, and it is nice not to have this opportunity to depend on the whims of the bandwidth-holder..

And I believe this *will* make a difference..

make a difference...

[http://users.livejournal.com/_rowan_tree_/]

This remains to be seen.
I am skeptical, just because there is already so much information out there that people are not going to bother read more, especially since it's not going to be in a pre-digested form. But anyone who wants to be optimistic (or hopeful) is welcome to do so.