My brother directed my attention to a story from Reuters today about Yahoo News, "the world's most popular Internet media destination", which is to begin testing on Tuesday on an expanded news search system that includes not only news stories and blogs but also user-contributed photos and related Web links.
Yahoo explains that their decision to include published news and opinion from sources other than traditional online media will enrich the quality and diversity of information, reporting and analysis available from the news site.
I found this structure particularly interesting:
"Yahoo has, in effect, created a three-tier system for finding news that starts with the links to top ten stories and related photographs produced by mainstream news organizations on the main Yahoo News site.
Readers searching for further details will be taken to a second-level news site, which splits the page between news from 6 500 professional sources and links to the hundreds of thousands of blogs available from its syndication service.
Thus the expanded search stops short of blurring all lines between edited news and self-publishing".
I think this is a useful way to make the most of "citizen journalism", where there is a system of distinction between what is traditional 'independent' journalism and what is produced by grassroots publishing media that perhaps challenges and criticises traditional media. Most importantly though, it provides more opportunity for editorial checks on what is published on the blogs and photo-sharing sites such as Flickr, so that not just any old crap gets put out there. They are at least giving a platform for increased awareness of the role that citizen journalism can play in enhancing media coverage and analysis.
I haven't found any information about how Yahoo is gathering or choosing particular blogs etc to include in their news search system, but one would hope they use some discretion. Another worry I do have with this is the danger of descending from layer to layer into an endless clickpool of information that is more overwhelming and confusing than helpful, and tends to repeat information over and over in different forms.
posted by Cat Murray @ 09:43
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home